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I beg you EA, Sims 5 MUST support rotational gameplay...
simmerorigin
Posts: 1,397 Member
(Note: It hasn't been confirmed that Sims 5 will be announced or when it will come out if it is announced - this is all purely speculation for now)
TLDR: rotational play is a very popular play style in the creator community that lost support since Sims 3. Sims 4 is a return with the My Households feature. However, Sims 5 should push the ball further past Sims 2 and have built-in UI functionality for selecting and managing the active families list, a play order, duration of each rotation (week, season, etc.), and sync up aging. I propose a Universal Calendar where each save file starts on Sunday, Week 1 and progresses forward in time in order to easily match up aging and time.
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I've been playing Sims 3 recently with all of the Nraas story progression mods + castes to attempt to make the game support rotational play. The thing is a MESS. Even with all of the mods, the household funds and accounting get completely messed up, bills/taxes don't get frozen. The game has zero thought when it comes to supporting this type of playstyle.
It feels like you have to fight an uphill battle to get this to work; everything is against you. It's extremely frustrating that the entire engine is built around a legacy, single-family per save file playstyle.
Support for rotational play is major wish for me when it comes to Sims 5. I want to be able to switch between active households, which essentially freezes the other households from any type of progression (save for relationship changes that occur when another active household is under control, just like in Sims 2).
This means thinking in the game development process about these question:
In terms of age synchronicity I have a specific solution:
I propose a Universal Calendar feature where every single save file starts on Sunday, Week 1. And every sim's birthday is represented as a specific day and week in the calendar (for premade sims, their birthday would be in a zero or negative week). If you play rotationally, you could play that same Week 1 for all those households. Once that is done, the entire universe moves to Week 2 and unplayed households age up. In order to move on to the next week, you would need to reconcile all of the timelines i.e. play each "My Households" household until Sunday, Week 2 in order to restart the rotation. To keep track of age syncing, every sim age is a subtraction of the current day and week number MINUS their birth date. This allows ages to be calculated rather than a simple incrementing of +1 day to their age each day (the latter tends to be prone to over or undercounting in some games).
No idea if these even belong to the game producers in question or if they even check these forums but @SimGuruLyndsay @SimGuruGrant @SimGuruGraham @SimGuruFrost @SimGuruNova
TLDR: rotational play is a very popular play style in the creator community that lost support since Sims 3. Sims 4 is a return with the My Households feature. However, Sims 5 should push the ball further past Sims 2 and have built-in UI functionality for selecting and managing the active families list, a play order, duration of each rotation (week, season, etc.), and sync up aging. I propose a Universal Calendar where each save file starts on Sunday, Week 1 and progresses forward in time in order to easily match up aging and time.
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I've been playing Sims 3 recently with all of the Nraas story progression mods + castes to attempt to make the game support rotational play. The thing is a MESS. Even with all of the mods, the household funds and accounting get completely messed up, bills/taxes don't get frozen. The game has zero thought when it comes to supporting this type of playstyle.
It feels like you have to fight an uphill battle to get this to work; everything is against you. It's extremely frustrating that the entire engine is built around a legacy, single-family per save file playstyle.
Support for rotational play is major wish for me when it comes to Sims 5. I want to be able to switch between active households, which essentially freezes the other households from any type of progression (save for relationship changes that occur when another active household is under control, just like in Sims 2).
This means thinking in the game development process about these question:
- How do we sync ages if playing multiple households in a round? Perhaps have a primary (first) household in the list of played households during which the entire world ages, then aging gets turned off automatically for the rest of the played households
- How can we make it seamless for players who want to move out specific Sims in a household so they become a new played household within the rotation block?
- How can we sync time played by each household, e.g. a week each? If household A is played for 3 days and a Sim is moved out into their own household B to be played next in the rotation block, will the game make sure household A is played for 4 more days and then household B is then played for only 4 days (instead of a full week in this case, to prevent being played for 10 days?
- Will the game provide a helpful UI for adding and removing households within a rotation block? Think the Sims 3/4 household selection screen, but now you can create an ordered list of households within the full list of available households that you want to actively play.
In terms of age synchronicity I have a specific solution:
I propose a Universal Calendar feature where every single save file starts on Sunday, Week 1. And every sim's birthday is represented as a specific day and week in the calendar (for premade sims, their birthday would be in a zero or negative week). If you play rotationally, you could play that same Week 1 for all those households. Once that is done, the entire universe moves to Week 2 and unplayed households age up. In order to move on to the next week, you would need to reconcile all of the timelines i.e. play each "My Households" household until Sunday, Week 2 in order to restart the rotation. To keep track of age syncing, every sim age is a subtraction of the current day and week number MINUS their birth date. This allows ages to be calculated rather than a simple incrementing of +1 day to their age each day (the latter tends to be prone to over or undercounting in some games).
No idea if these even belong to the game producers in question or if they even check these forums but @SimGuruLyndsay @SimGuruGrant @SimGuruGraham @SimGuruFrost @SimGuruNova
He/him | Simmer since Sims 1 | Active Sims 2 wants-based rotational player, Sims 3 legacy player | My gameplay rules via PleasantSims | Bring back challenge and depth to the Sims: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/17959464/#Comment_17959464
Post edited by simmerorigin on
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The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
People use Twallan's Story Progression mod to "freeze" inactive households so that when you come back to them there are no surprises - no new spouses, friends or sweethearts, or enemies, no skilling up, no career changes, etc. Go to The Sims 3 section of this forum to get help on how to set the mod up the way you want. They are really helpful and knowledgeable there!
You just can turn off aging in the Options menu after the entire world ages. You can also set the speed at which the world will age by species (human, dog, cat, horse and how long at each stage: baby, child, teenage, young adult, adult, senior). You can also use MasterController to age specific sims if you want or the whole town if you wish.
You can go into Town Edit mode and then split households into new ones within the rotation block. If you want to integrate that into the story, you can kick a member out too. Depending on how sims have left will determine how the money gets divided.
Switching between households is really easy. You just go into Town Edit mode and switch households when you've played them the desired number of days. You can also do this through MasterController which I think is better.
You just need to go into Town Edit mode to see all the households in the world. You can add and remove households in this mode. If you want to see a list of all the households, use MasterController for that.
I'm just surprised that you don't know this stuff. This is common knowledge. Come on over to The Sims 3 section of this forum and ask all the questions you want to know about playing rotationally in The Sims 3 (there are quite a number of rotational players there). You'll get a lot of help!
I wrote those as hypothetical questions for the Sims team to think about solving when designing the Sims 5. The point is for the Sims team to consider them when building the engine for The Sims 5.
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I definitely want rotational play supported in Sims 5.
That’s the only gripe I have with the Sims 3, things change if you switch and you have to load the last household played. No neighbourhood map selection. I used to buy businesses but there’s no point as you have to keep buying it when you return. The only thing Sims seem to get is money from their jobs.
I first thought to play rotational in Sims 3 was to wait until all Sims were asleep, save and then switch. But things change regardless when you switch back. 🙄🤦🏼♂️.
I've seen lots of people who play rotationally(myself included). It's really going to hurt EA financially if they don't allow players to play rotationally; I think EA will put rotational play into Sims 5.
Yes, I want EA to go a step further beyond Sims 2. I would love a way to customize via a user interface the families within my rotation, the duration (e.g. a week or season each), syncing of aging, etc.
I don’t like playing only a single household, so I think have rotational play is important. Legacy style players only have a single family in their rotation block so it works out that all play styles can be accommodated
I'm confused by some of the things others are saying. Do you plan on some sort of required rotation that requires players to have more than 1 household and/or requires you to rotate after a certain amount of time? Wouldn't it be voluntary?
She's just asking that the playstyle be taken into consideration and that the tools and UI element that make it an accessible way to play are provided with the game, rather than requiring a boatload of mods and tweaks to accomplish like TS3 does.
It wouldn't be "required". Technically, playing just one household is identical to rotational play except you only have a single household in the rotation.
Imagine an interface where you set the played households that you want to play, and enter the duration of each household and then the game handles timing it and telling you when it's time to rotate, or even prompts you to rotate. For people that only put one household in the played households part of that interface, it knows you aren't going to want to rotate at all. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
TS4 already has the start of this, with how you can add households to "My Households" and mark them as "played". All it needs is the addition of a timer and that part of this kind of interface would be done.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
All of this exactly, thank you.
(also he/him, but I have a Plumbella screengrab as my profile picture so I don't blame you lol)
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
Something in the options would be great. I like the idea of using 4 ‘My Households’ as it’s something they’ve already got and it’s just integrating it into 3. I’ve no idea if that’s possible with different engines but they could try.
I disable story progression and ageing in TS3 as I feel the world changes quicker than the house you’re actually playing.
But you make sound like you can't play rotationally in The Sims 3 when that isn't true. Plenty of people play TS3 rotationally. And it IS surprising that you don't know the stuff I mentioned. I didn't express it to be condescending. I was genuinely astonished! Like I said, this is all common knowledge. I just think you making The Sims 3 as an example of not being able to play rotationally in The Sims series was a poor choice.
Sims 3 isn’t a poor choice though. Playing rotational is very problematic. Business get lost and you have to buy them back. Your Sims outfits change and you have to switch back to correct them. Often they don’t get given shoes and most of my unplayed Sims are running around barefoot!
Also unemployed Sims frequently get jobs that I haven’t assigned. I have to assign everyone work, most often part time to stop the game choosing a career.
If you forget to delete the cow plant on the active lot, it’s dead when you return to that house on the next rotation.
It’s further problematic if story progression is enabled the game may choose one of your unplayed households to move away. This happened with my own Goth family. When the son moved out, he shortly completely vanished. There was another Sim in the house I picked.
Ageing is quicker for unplayed houses. This is why I disable both options.
Also until they fixed it, for the first year or so babies would turn up even in households that disliked children or were living alone. Styles McGraw, Agnes Crumplebottom, Thornton Wolff were all living alone and they kept getting a baby when I checked the world after rotations. I moved one of the working girls Ayesha I think into the bin, simply to added her to relevant household to take the new baby added and then delete. Rinse and repeat.
Strange that the Bunch family never got new additions!
So playing rotational is not easy at all in Sims 3.
Mods are a blessing but you shouldn’t need them for basic things.
Sims 2 was much better as the house stayed more or less as you left it. You could play Goth house week 1 and as long as you didn’t move anyone or they died on another lot, that house was still at the point you left in week 1 even if you returned in week 12!
I've never had the problems you had playing rotationally in the Sims3. All the problems you mentioned can be resolved by the common knowledge that I had previously posted, a lot of which didn't need a mod for the basic things.
You can do the same thing in The Sims 3 where if you left a household, things would be the same when you come back to it weeks later. How do you think we're able to do colony challenges or rebuilding a town after an apocalypse challenge in the Sims 3??? Yes, you could use a mod like Twallan's Story Progression, but it's because The Sims 3 is a dynamic game whereas The Sims 2 is completely static. People keep forgetting that.
Like I said, please visit The Sims 3 section of this forum for help about rotational play. It's not a secret and it's not difficult to set up. You can aske @igazor if you have questions about Twallan's StoryProgression mod so that nothing changes in the households you leave. There are even more helpful and specific tips at NRAAS from TS3 players there!
I'm not trying to discourage you from campaigning for rotational play in The Sims 5. It's just that people can actually play rotationally in The Sims 3 all this time. It might be a more automatic feature of The Sims 2, but people actually have more control over what remains static and dynamic in The Sims 3. And that's a good thing!
For the household manage user interface, I really like the household manager screen in Sims 4. One thing I would hope they improve on is to make the maximum saved household list larger, because I like to play a lot of large families, which adds to the Sim tally. And also, I dislike culling automatically. I would rather some warning pop up and then be asked to cull my own Sims down if I need. I would also like Sims 5 UI to be able to adjust household funds, as this would make it so much easier to place families in lots.
I prefer to choose my own play order, so I hope Sims 5 gives the option to just jump in with any family for a new save, rather then force you to create a new household or download one or play your last family.
I am really hoping Sims 5 will have more seasons options, like one week, two weeks, three weeks, and four weeks. And maybe even a full monthly calendar matching our real one, so we can plot out real life holidays on the exact days. When rotating, I like Sims 4, how everything is current, like the holiday, season etc.
For aging, I play with it off, but I really hope they will allow birthday parties for aging off players in Sims 5. Even though my Sims don't age. I still think of them as having different ages within their age group, since I don't see them all as twins born on the same day, but they are born different times and I age them up manually, so they are older or younger siblings. I would still like to have birthday parties with candles for everyone, but just for the fun of it, not to actually age them up if possible. Maybe there could be a separate candle or topper or cake that would make it a cake that ages them up. I also really liked the Sims 2 feature of aging up multiple Sims at the same time. I used to have just one party for all the kids who are friends and age them up together.
And I really hope they improve on University a bit and make it so that progression freezes completely when you rotate. I would like their classes to just pause if I rotate away, so I don't have to worry about ending the semester. Right now the carry on studying and their grades seem to drop down a bit.
I had many problems the first few years of playing Sims 3. It wasn’t until the later patches it was more stable. The baby glitch drove me bananas 🍌!
I wouldn’t use mods for rotational play. Sorry that doesn’t make sense to me.
Rotational play was introduced in Sims 2 so I did expect the same set up for 3. I was very surprised how different the two games are. Sims 4 feels more of an upgrade of 2 than 3.
I do think that making Sims 3 more alive they forgot that maybe not everyone would like that.
I know there’s NRass and Twallan’s Story progression mod. I see no reason to add them. Thanks for posting the links perhaps there are others who will like them.
If you need mods to do something as basic as rotational play then maybe I need to rethink Sims 3.
All of these questions are hypothetical ones about the Sims 5. You misunderstood this. They are not about the Sims 3 or an indication that I needed answers regarding the Sims 3. I am aware of every single one of these points you made. Again, this was not a gap in my knowledge regarding getting Sims 3 rotationally settings to work, so there is nothing that you need to be "surprised" about. This was about making sure the capabilities of the Sims 5 are thought through so that they are built into the game. That is my hope. These questions don't make sense when you change the context to the Sims 3, because then the answers are trivial. That's where your confusion comes from.
This thread is forward-looking and about the Sims 5. It was motivated by playing the Sims 3; even with all of the mods, it does not always function smoothly. And it definitely can't happen without mods. @ClarionOfJoy
I'd still like to be able to see my other sims out and about, but to lock off any dramatic changes would be great.
I can recall making a family of three brothers and just sticking them in a starting house. By the time I got around to playing them, one had already fathered one child with a second on the way with some random townie. It took a bit of fiddling around to get that straightened out. (I just moved the NPC into her own house with her child, then adjusted the kid's parentage using MCCC. No sims were killed in this process!)