Pause and play helps a lot. Turning aging off on non-active households helps a lot too. I really enjoy Parenthood and Tiny Living packs the most for my family rotational gameplay. There is no wrong way to rotate. You can schedule it or have it random. If your system is a decent gaming one, I highly recommend turning culling off by doing unlimited because otherwise Sims will cull when rotating especially as more and more NPCs are added.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller
Hello everyone! Sorry for the late reply. My next off day isn't until Sunday and I work super early in the morning so I try to come online when I can. Thanks so much for all of your replies!! They all have helped out so much. I did like giving my sims in 2 the same amount of time, so I may start out that way. I even made an apartment complex and moved all of my rotating families in so I could have some fun with that. I used to love rotational play so much especially with the different personalities and life goals I'm super excited to finally try it in the sims 4. After all this time I decided to finally go back in. And nothing against mods. I've just become lazy and got tired of having to update them so often so I'm not totally against it, haha and if I'm going to be honest I really want to try and have fun with the game for what it is.
I have one last question if that's ok. How many families do you play with in your rotational game? Since there are so many worlds we have now I'm finding it hard to pick and choose. I'm thinking maybe one or two families from each world or just one or two from my favorite places. or maybe just pick the ones I'm drawn to. I've always wanted to play with the Pancakes lol I may start there. Who knows. I do want to steer away from playing my simself I have done that a lot and its become tiring lol
"Bada su the gorn bada su the brawn bada bady oda aba donk donk donk gerbits gerbits vo gerbits".
I have one last question if that's ok. How many families do you play with in your rotational game? Since there are so many worlds we have now I'm finding it hard to pick and choose. I'm thinking maybe one or two families from each world or just one or two from my favorite places. or maybe just pick the ones I'm drawn to. I've always wanted to play with the Pancakes lol I may start there. Who knows. I do want to steer away from playing my simself I have done that a lot and its become tiring lol
I think I am currently playing with about 20, but my rotations are 3 days rather than a whole week and it still feels like it takes me a long time to get through it. One person mentioned above, it's easy to move families between being "played" and "unplayed," so if you want to skip a certain family on a rotation you can just move them into unplayed during the last household in the rotation so they still age correctly, and then move them back to played if you want to play them live in the next rotation. I have gotten pretty good about juggling them in and out as needed, so that they don't miss aging on the right timeline. I also have to work hard not to fall in love with all of them and just end up with more and more families endlessly. That's what happened in Sims 2, I eventually had two pages of Sim families and it was way too many. This time I'm making myself stick to just my favorites and being willing to let some of the children grow up and marry NPCs and just release them into the unplayed world. MCCC means that they can have families of their own without me playing them out. My bigger families will have a club together and I add each family member once they age up to children, so even if some of the Sims in the extended family are no longer in my rotation, I regularly use the club to have the whole family come over, so all the cousins grow up together etc.
My username has been my internet handle for over 20 years since I was 16 and refers to when I had a crush on a very tall boy. I intend absolutely no violence toward beautiful giraffes.
My rotational play method is extremely random. When I open the game I just look around and end up on some random household for a bit. I'll often switch between a couple of them during that same play session.
It looks like if I were to get University this play style would be very disruptive to the system in that?
If not, it's one way to do thing - just let the mood take you on each load up of the game. Real life has plans, goals, and schedules. Sims for me is where things are just 'random lols'.
Not necessarily. I'm not at all strict in my rotational play, and which household I jump into depends on my mood at any given point, but I do tend to play university students for a full term at a time, just to make sure the grades don't get messed up. I just make sure that if I'm going to start a term with a sim, I can play long enough that day (I mean, my real life day) to get through the whole term in case I don't feel like coming back to that household the next time I play.
I’m up to 28 active households right now! It fluctuates though as I add or remove families.
I recently dropped a bunch of families that I was getting bored with and added in some new ones. It definitely takes a while to get through a rotation. I’ve been playing the save file forever though…. Some of my main families in the rotation are on to their 7th and 8th generations!
I play over 30 households. Some are more of what I consider main characters, but then there are also more side characters on top of those 30. Some I play more and others a bit less.
I was playing about 40 households in my last rotation lol, but I decided it was too many. I had them spread across every world for variety - I had started with the intention of one per world but kinda got carried away.
For my new game that I am just setting up, I am having 14 households on a 28 day season. And I'm only using 4 worlds to start with so that some of them can be neighbours, then as the kids grow up I will move some to other worlds.
I'm playing 90+ households. With CoL it will grow with just a couple. I try to be strict when getting a new world, but normally end up adding 2-3 new households. Because of the specific theme I'll move some existing households who will try farming, and I already play 3 of the "new" households in other, temporary worlds. 90+ is the reason why I can't stop by them all on every rotation, but only every other. It works fine, and if I want to focus for a while, say with a new pack installed, I might play a full year with just a few households without aging them.
I have a really high number of households now but that save is from 2016. (Every so often, I go in and "Save As" with a new version). Without looking I don't know the exact number but I can always slim it down if I want. One thing I'll do sometimes when deciding on the next house to play is that I'll go into "Manage Households" and scroll to the bottom of the list of houses then pick from there. It's basically in the order of which they were last played.
I've been thinking that I might make choices and just focus on ones that really interest me but then I get into playing with the older households again. Sometimes it's hard to explain why a household is interesting but it just is. I guess that I also have "story arcs" of ongoing things that are happening. One example is that I have two rival home decorators. I hadn't played the second household yet because I had been doing something else but I will.
If I take a break then I can just jump into another household or go back to the last I played. Sometimes things play out differently than I had planned.
I'm playing 90+ households. With CoL it will grow with just a couple. I try to be strict when getting a new world, but normally end up adding 2-3 new households. Because of the specific theme I'll move some existing households who will try farming, and I already play 3 of the "new" households in other, temporary worlds. 90+ is the reason why I can't stop by them all on every rotation, but only every other. It works fine, and if I want to focus for a while, say with a new pack installed, I might play a full year with just a few households without aging them.
Im starting with 10 households. Mainly sims from Willow Creek. Then Oasis Springs and finally Brindleton Bay. I know im going to expand later because there are so many families I want to play but I just don't want to overwhelm myself lol. Im not sure if ill reach the 90 mark but who knows lol
"Bada su the gorn bada su the brawn bada bady oda aba donk donk donk gerbits gerbits vo gerbits".
How I do my rotational play is, I turn aging on for only active household, I do use mc command to have longer age spans. I like to first max out sims careers if they are in one of each sim in that household, once all are maxed then I move onto another house. I do this for every household that I like to play, sometimes I might try a new family. I do make my own family/sims as well. After careers I will work on relationships, marriage, focus more on their children if they have any! I always start in the spring as well so by the time their careers are maxed its usually summer or fall!
Right now I have 17 families in my rotation. 11 of those are related to my three main starter families, and the others all have some sort of friendship with the three founding families. Each is playing out certain aspects of the game (e.g. a paranormal investigator, a spellcaster, a black widow, etc.) so I can move between them without getting too bored. They’re mostly spread out across different worlds but I let them all travel between worlds to whatever community lots I feel like using.
I’ve also got some secondary families that I play if I don’t want to play someone for a full week; they’re the side characters to my main stories. If there’s a sim week I’m feeling uninspired, I can play a couple days with each of these guys without feeling the need to commit to a full week of rotation. There’s the shopkeeper so I can edit the big retail lot since some stuff needs live mode. I’ve got a uni landlord who I play when there’s kids in uni, and my scoutmaster who takes all the kids to summer camp.
@Yautjagirl I made a fine counting - turns out 90+ is correct but 100 is exact If I only could remember who were the last added household, being #100 should grant them a diploma or at least some flowers
With upcoming CoL I'll be in the hundreds... yeeeks!
I don't have any set order in my personal rotations, I play whichever household I feel like playing when entering my game. As for aging I have a custom long lifespan and have all played households age together at the same time, the lifespan is so long that I rarely worry about sims aging up without my presence, and even if they do it's not a big deal, I just celebrate their birthdays the next time I enter the household.
I'm playing 90+ households. With CoL it will grow with just a couple. I try to be strict when getting a new world, but normally end up adding 2-3 new households. Because of the specific theme I'll move some existing households who will try farming, and I already play 3 of the "new" households in other, temporary worlds. 90+ is the reason why I can't stop by them all on every rotation, but only every other. It works fine, and if I want to focus for a while, say with a new pack installed, I might play a full year with just a few households without aging them.
90
I haven't counted my households, but it's probably somewhere around there, or at least more than 50. All I really know is that I'm always bumping right up against the 200 sims limits, and having to move families in and out of played status. Come to think of it, that's something I'm going to have to really think about before I create my new families for Cottage Living.
But, I've been playing the same primary save from day one. It works for me, but we all have our own way of doing things.
I'm playing 90+ households. With CoL it will grow with just a couple. I try to be strict when getting a new world, but normally end up adding 2-3 new households. Because of the specific theme I'll move some existing households who will try farming, and I already play 3 of the "new" households in other, temporary worlds. 90+ is the reason why I can't stop by them all on every rotation, but only every other. It works fine, and if I want to focus for a while, say with a new pack installed, I might play a full year with just a few households without aging them.
90
I haven't counted my households, but it's probably somewhere around there, or at least more than 50. All I really know is that I'm always bumping right up against the 200 sims limits, and having to move families in and out of played status. Come to think of it, that's something I'm going to have to really think about before I create my new families for Cottage Living.
But, I've been playing the same primary save from day one. It works for me, but we all have our own way of doing things.
I used to have a sim limit, but then I removed it and I think there are now 400+ sims in my game. The save is from the release back in 2014. I did not notice much of a difference going from 200 to 400 sims, and that was also the period when I started to add tons of CC. And I'm on a low-end computer (some lag, but nothing I can't live with). I'm trying to limit the kids in each household, but as I use a dice+feritility to decide these things some seems top have endless of kids - like a couple renting one of the smallest flats in the Fashion District, they had 5 kids already and might still have more. Perhaps I should add 1 cat temporarily to stop them, lol.
I have about 5/6 families per neighborhood, and I think I'm playing about 6 neighborhoods
Here's an example:
I just played Windenburg last night
Candy & Yuki - Candy is having an affair with Dominic Fyers
Sergio & J. Hunnington are roommates and now secret lovers. But Sergio wants to marry Siobhan for the money/house
Bjergsen - the father is a detective
Free Spirits - lesbian couple who are fixing up the house
Villareal - criminals
Fyers - Morgan moved out to be a vampire, Dominic is having an affair with Candy
I want Sergio to pay Villareals to kill Siohhan's parents, so he can movie in with her and take over the house. But something will go wrong -not sure what yet. Bjorn will think it's Candy, and possibly put her in jail. And I want Free Spirits to get involved somehow.
Also, I'm not sure if I want the parents killed and then have someone bring them back. Or if I want them kidnapped. But Sergio & Siobhan will end up with the big house.
And Sergio might kill Siobhan for more money, and end up with J. Hunnington. Unless J. Hunnington marries someone else, and it's too late for Sergio.
I guess I am a rotation player, but my style is super casual and very random. I am enjoying this thread, it is giving me insight into different modes of play.
I play with all aging off; if I want someone to age up I'll bake them a cake. I play my own sims mostly. I keep trying, but the premades don't interest me that much.
Right now I jump around a lot, and have different sims in different saves. I guess you could say each save represents a different Universe. I've got too many several Universes going right now: Oasis Springs Families, Vampires, Star Wars, and Decorators. My Oasis Springs Families has the most because it now has sims scattered across several worlds. I may delete the Vampire save and move them to OSF. I mainly had the V's separate because I didn't want my favorites to suddenly die from the sun while I was playing a different household, but at this point, eh, I'll just dump them back into the game from the gallery. In the Star Wars I am slowly redoing all the houses in a Sci Fi style, but so far I've only done about half of Oasis Springs. Decorators is a brand new save I made because I've done so much decorating in OSF that I didn't want to be forced to change anything I'd already done. In OSF I've deleted a lot of the premades and weird houses, and I wanted to see how this was going to go. This save will probably get deleted with the decorators being moved to OSF.
The main reason I have so many universes is because I have a lot of houses I've either built or have extensively renovated, and I prefer the larger worlds so I can have a bunch of stuff together. I guess I got really spoiled playing Sims 1 and 2 with their big worlds. I get really irritated playing in something as dinky as Forgotten Hollow. I mean, really, 5 lots and I can't even modify the park in the middle? GRRR. I took one look at the magic world and jumped right back out. I'll play in it when I explore that pack (which means I'll probably start another game save and build my world someplace else). the most universes I've had was 6, then I got it down to 2, and now it's back up to 4.
I've got about 20 or so playable families scattered around. Most of my households are singles or pairs. In OSF I have...about 6 playable families, and another 7 or so failed playables, who are just there taking up a house, waiting to be moved out or deleted. Vampires, 1 vampire family of 6, and 2 families of 4 - 6 sims to invite over for dinner . SW, 5 families, I think, with a couple waiting to be moved in from household management. Decorators, 1 household of 3 room mates.
I play whatever sim or household I am in the mood for. Sometimes I'll play one household for five minutes or for several game sessions. I do sometimes grind away with someone, especially if they are going thru University or if I want them to get to a certain level. The last couple of weeks I've been working in the Decorator save and now have 3 sims living in San Mushino. I just got CL and I am enjoying using my decorators to explore this new-to-me EP.
I've been thinking about recreating a family I lost while moving my games to my mother's computer. I had been using her computer for gaming and had played them for about 2 months, which has to be a record for me. I accidently wiped all her game files while figuring out how to move my games over (the correct answer being: you can't do that, you ninny, you have to set up multiple users on the computer itself to do that - so she has her games under her user name and I have my games under mine. I have a lot more game packs than she has). If I do that I'll either cheat them up or...sigh...grind away getting them back to where I want them. I really want to recreate their house.
Oh, my, look how long this is. Sorry, but writing this has clarified some things for me in my games, so I'm leaving it.
Thanks everybody, you've given me a lot of interesting ideas!
edited to add: Mom didn't mind that I wiped her file, since she didn't play much.
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And I have each of the households know someone in another household, so they don’t feel alone.
Maybe there’s a parent group with toddlers? Or a bowling club? Or two people having an affair? Competing politicians?
Rotating is so much fun!!
I have one last question if that's ok. How many families do you play with in your rotational game? Since there are so many worlds we have now I'm finding it hard to pick and choose. I'm thinking maybe one or two families from each world or just one or two from my favorite places. or maybe just pick the ones I'm drawn to. I've always wanted to play with the Pancakes lol I may start there. Who knows. I do want to steer away from playing my simself I have done that a lot and its become tiring lol
I think I am currently playing with about 20, but my rotations are 3 days rather than a whole week and it still feels like it takes me a long time to get through it. One person mentioned above, it's easy to move families between being "played" and "unplayed," so if you want to skip a certain family on a rotation you can just move them into unplayed during the last household in the rotation so they still age correctly, and then move them back to played if you want to play them live in the next rotation. I have gotten pretty good about juggling them in and out as needed, so that they don't miss aging on the right timeline. I also have to work hard not to fall in love with all of them and just end up with more and more families endlessly. That's what happened in Sims 2, I eventually had two pages of Sim families and it was way too many. This time I'm making myself stick to just my favorites and being willing to let some of the children grow up and marry NPCs and just release them into the unplayed world. MCCC means that they can have families of their own without me playing them out. My bigger families will have a club together and I add each family member once they age up to children, so even if some of the Sims in the extended family are no longer in my rotation, I regularly use the club to have the whole family come over, so all the cousins grow up together etc.
Not necessarily. I'm not at all strict in my rotational play, and which household I jump into depends on my mood at any given point, but I do tend to play university students for a full term at a time, just to make sure the grades don't get messed up. I just make sure that if I'm going to start a term with a sim, I can play long enough that day (I mean, my real life day) to get through the whole term in case I don't feel like coming back to that household the next time I play.
I recently dropped a bunch of families that I was getting bored with and added in some new ones. It definitely takes a while to get through a rotation. I’ve been playing the save file forever though…. Some of my main families in the rotation are on to their 7th and 8th generations!
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For my new game that I am just setting up, I am having 14 households on a 28 day season. And I'm only using 4 worlds to start with so that some of them can be neighbours, then as the kids grow up I will move some to other worlds.
I've been thinking that I might make choices and just focus on ones that really interest me but then I get into playing with the older households again. Sometimes it's hard to explain why a household is interesting but it just is. I guess that I also have "story arcs" of ongoing things that are happening. One example is that I have two rival home decorators. I hadn't played the second household yet because I had been doing something else but I will.
If I take a break then I can just jump into another household or go back to the last I played. Sometimes things play out differently than I had planned.
90
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I’ve also got some secondary families that I play if I don’t want to play someone for a full week; they’re the side characters to my main stories. If there’s a sim week I’m feeling uninspired, I can play a couple days with each of these guys without feeling the need to commit to a full week of rotation. There’s the shopkeeper so I can edit the big retail lot since some stuff needs live mode. I’ve got a uni landlord who I play when there’s kids in uni, and my scoutmaster who takes all the kids to summer camp.
With upcoming CoL I'll be in the hundreds... yeeeks!
I haven't counted my households, but it's probably somewhere around there, or at least more than 50. All I really know is that I'm always bumping right up against the 200 sims limits, and having to move families in and out of played status. Come to think of it, that's something I'm going to have to really think about before I create my new families for Cottage Living.
But, I've been playing the same primary save from day one. It works for me, but we all have our own way of doing things.
I used to have a sim limit, but then I removed it and I think there are now 400+ sims in my game. The save is from the release back in 2014. I did not notice much of a difference going from 200 to 400 sims, and that was also the period when I started to add tons of CC. And I'm on a low-end computer (some lag, but nothing I can't live with). I'm trying to limit the kids in each household, but as I use a dice+feritility to decide these things some seems top have endless of kids - like a couple renting one of the smallest flats in the Fashion District, they had 5 kids already and might still have more. Perhaps I should add 1 cat temporarily to stop them, lol.
Here's an example:
I just played Windenburg last night
Candy & Yuki - Candy is having an affair with Dominic Fyers
Sergio & J. Hunnington are roommates and now secret lovers. But Sergio wants to marry Siobhan for the money/house
Bjergsen - the father is a detective
Free Spirits - lesbian couple who are fixing up the house
Villareal - criminals
Fyers - Morgan moved out to be a vampire, Dominic is having an affair with Candy
I want Sergio to pay Villareals to kill Siohhan's parents, so he can movie in with her and take over the house. But something will go wrong -not sure what yet. Bjorn will think it's Candy, and possibly put her in jail. And I want Free Spirits to get involved somehow.
Also, I'm not sure if I want the parents killed and then have someone bring them back. Or if I want them kidnapped. But Sergio & Siobhan will end up with the big house.
And Sergio might kill Siobhan for more money, and end up with J. Hunnington. Unless J. Hunnington marries someone else, and it's too late for Sergio.
I play with all aging off; if I want someone to age up I'll bake them a cake. I play my own sims mostly. I keep trying, but the premades don't interest me that much.
Right now I jump around a lot, and have different sims in different saves. I guess you could say each save represents a different Universe. I've got too many several Universes going right now: Oasis Springs Families, Vampires, Star Wars, and Decorators. My Oasis Springs Families has the most because it now has sims scattered across several worlds. I may delete the Vampire save and move them to OSF. I mainly had the V's separate because I didn't want my favorites to suddenly die from the sun while I was playing a different household, but at this point, eh, I'll just dump them back into the game from the gallery. In the Star Wars I am slowly redoing all the houses in a Sci Fi style, but so far I've only done about half of Oasis Springs. Decorators is a brand new save I made because I've done so much decorating in OSF that I didn't want to be forced to change anything I'd already done. In OSF I've deleted a lot of the premades and weird houses, and I wanted to see how this was going to go. This save will probably get deleted with the decorators being moved to OSF.
The main reason I have so many universes is because I have a lot of houses I've either built or have extensively renovated, and I prefer the larger worlds so I can have a bunch of stuff together. I guess I got really spoiled playing Sims 1 and 2 with their big worlds. I get really irritated playing in something as dinky as Forgotten Hollow. I mean, really, 5 lots and I can't even modify the park in the middle? GRRR. I took one look at the magic world and jumped right back out. I'll play in it when I explore that pack (which means I'll probably start another game save and build my world someplace else). the most universes I've had was 6, then I got it down to 2, and now it's back up to 4.
I've got about 20 or so playable families scattered around. Most of my households are singles or pairs. In OSF I have...about 6 playable families, and another 7 or so failed playables, who are just there taking up a house, waiting to be moved out or deleted. Vampires, 1 vampire family of 6, and 2 families of 4 - 6 sims to invite over for dinner
I play whatever sim or household I am in the mood for. Sometimes I'll play one household for five minutes or for several game sessions. I do sometimes grind away with someone, especially if they are going thru University or if I want them to get to a certain level. The last couple of weeks I've been working in the Decorator save and now have 3 sims living in San Mushino. I just got CL and I am enjoying using my decorators to explore this new-to-me EP.
I've been thinking about recreating a family I lost while moving my games to my mother's computer. I had been using her computer for gaming and had played them for about 2 months, which has to be a record for me. I accidently wiped all her game files while figuring out how to move my games over (the correct answer being: you can't do that, you ninny, you have to set up multiple users on the computer itself to do that - so she has her games under her user name and I have my games under mine. I have a lot more game packs than she has). If I do that I'll either cheat them up or...sigh...grind away getting them back to where I want them. I really want to recreate their house.
Oh, my, look how long this is. Sorry, but writing this has clarified some things for me in my games, so I'm leaving it.
Thanks everybody, you've given me a lot of interesting ideas!
edited to add: Mom didn't mind that I wiped her file, since she didn't play much.