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What have you learned about your game style

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  • texxx78texxx78 Posts: 5,657 Member
    I've played in many many different ways but i prefer/gravitate to:

    playing in very small rotations, ideally one neighbourhood. I like to know the premades better by playing them. If there's an empty home in the neighbourhood i leave it that way so that i can fill it later with some of the played family's spares.

    I always play with aging on and a customized lifespan that is a bit bigger than normal.

    Toddlers are aged to child through cas right away. I prefer to have a bigger baby stage than to play with toddlers.

    Whims direct my storyline every time.

    I can't play without autonomy, whims, preferences, aspirations and difficulty mods.

    I also can't play without Ui cheats, personality please, more/less uni credits and mccc.
  • MkinsMkins Posts: 79 Member
    I tend to play with aging off and I like to let my Sim allow things to happen naturally though I can never let my home remain dirty, so my Sim tends to always be a Neat Sim that cleans everything before and after work no matter how many times I try not to go OCD with them like myself irl.

    Since Paranormal I can't play with a normal house, it just gives me too much joy and a playthrough without Guidry and Bonehilda feels empty, and I always take the Detective career no matter how many times I say I'll try something new.

    During the Welcome Wagon I always thank everyone for coming, compliment the fruitcake no matter what and bake sugar cookies for them.

    My only changes are my house designs, location and Sim's looks but more often than not I live in Newcrest, which always looks like my home community irl when I add lots from the Gallery.
  • rudolpharudolpha Posts: 995 Member
    I play with aging on for all sims and a long lifespan. I play multiple saves and rotate 3 families in each one. Most are legacy style families and all my sims have some type of goal to work on, usually job success, or aspiration achievement, and I try to do everything that gets put in the game, except for collections and running businesses. As a non-builder I've downloaded many lots, residential and commercial, but most of my sims are my own creations and I like giving them makeovers every so often. Some own a family business but after I create it I seldom keep it going as a money maker. Ditto restaurants which I love having in my games but don't run them, just visit for outings, along with bars, etc. My sims are pampered and they all have certain items I consider musts in their homes. They join clubs and go on vacations (I added rental lots to many neighborhoods). I try to personalize each save I play with a different theme and the lots I add reflect the theme of the game. NPCs get matched every so often and start families, so that I maintain a large group of unplayed sim families, but I seldom play pre-made families. I keep notes on my sim families so I can follow their goals.
  • Lucy_HenleyLucy_Henley Posts: 2,943 Member
    I’m generally a very happy-families player, although recently I’ve been trying a few different storyline ideas where things aren’t so straight forward.
    I play with aging on, and prefer the long lifespan.
    I’m not really a “rotation” player as that often requires a certain level of planning; I have inattentive ADHD and am not very organised. Obviously this is just me, there may be others like me who are quite organised about playing! Sometimes I can get really into playing one particular family and want to play them for quite a while, whereas I’ll only play another family briefly, depending on what’s going on with my story.
    I always age babies up around 24 hours after they’re born. Aside from that, I’m fine with the normal age stages. I don’t mind toddlers since they can grab themselves a plate of food and put themselves to bed.
    Mostly I ignore premades, sometimes my Sims will befriend them. In my main story saves, I’m at the point now where many of the original premades are dead, so there’s that.
    For quite a long time, I didn’t pay much attention to the Gardening skill, but now I get really into it, making sure I can obtain cowberries and dragon fruits and so on. It’s a great way to earn money!
    I play with either normal Sims or Spellcasters. Vampires don’t interest me. I’ve played a little bit with mermaids but not much, same with aliens.
    There are some careers I play a lot (*ahem* Culinary *ahem*) and some I’ve never played with, or only played a little.
    I’ve often considered doing a legacy but I’m too attached to my mods :D Plus I tend to create my Sim’s future partners/spouses, whereas in legacies you can’t create them.
    I also use Newcrest for community lots; mainly restaurants and a spa.

    There are lots more things, but that would mean a ridiculously long post…
  • TillyTilly Posts: 16 Member
    I absolutely hate toddlers, but I also hate aging my sims up before their birthday. (I play legacies and it feels like I'd be missing something if I did, I have no idea why missing 7 sim days of stress feels like such a big deal though...) I rarely ever interact with toddlers when controlling my older sims - I usually just manually drag party-size dinners from fridge to the counter, and let the kiddos grab food from themselves. Do I feel evil and like a bad parent doing it? Yes. Does it save my nerves from the utter destruction caused by high chairs? Also yes.

    Still, I feel weirdly attached to my sims. I adore them and want them to have interesting, (usually mostly happy) lives <3 Family living is fun too, but I feel like too many sims in a household can get a bit unnerving at times, so I don't really like to have more than four sims at once. I also don't enjoy rotational gameplay, I feel like it distracts me too much from the actual storylines I have planned for my main family.

    I also love to see the family tree grow bigger and bigger! I don't know why, but it makes me feel like I have accomplished something XD Even if it's only due to the out-moved siblings having children thanks to the Neighbourhood stories.

    I also love building cute shells of houses, but furnishing always makes me nervous! As of now, I only have a few packs, so there aren't too many furniture options anyways... I just never feel like I can get the insides of the house to be pretty :/ And I'm not the best with landscaping either, so if I could just build a house on an ready-scaped lot and then hire an internal decorator to do the rest, I'd probably be over the moon :D
  • Nate_Whiplash1Nate_Whiplash1 Posts: 4,085 Member
    Interesting question indeed!

    I have 5 saves; 4 of them have aging off, and the other one is my "serious save"; no monkey business, aging on.

    I've learned that heavy rotational play is what keeps me interested.

    I've learned that passing the boundaries of what the devs ever imagined could happen also keeps me interested--and that's without mods.

    I've learned to really appreciate CAS; nowadays that's a staple of my gameplay. I'm no genius at it--I'm good, but some are far better at it than I am.

    And finally, the one thing that I have NOT learned about my game style, because I've always known; my game play will always be 100% situational. There will never be any storylines, no family play, no experiences to learn from. My sims are like shooting stars; they live for the moment.
  • VeeDubVeeDub Posts: 1,862 Member

    I learned early on that the gameplay itself in this game doesn't hold my interest for very long on its own. The next thing I learned is that the game can make a quite nice story creation tool if I'm willing to use generous doses of my own imagination in my play. And I do. After that, I learned that I'm not content just making one kind of story, so I have a number of saves for different kinds of tales, and I jump around between them; a form of rotation, but that term is a little more rigid-sounding than my more relaxed process (based on "whatever and whenever I feel like it"), which I learned suits my flights of fancy far better. :lol:

    As for story construction itself, most of what I do involves varying levels of improvisation (in game terms, autonomous sim actions and occasional mini-games of my own devising to make periodic decisions or just to shake things up a bit), but I do have certain rules. They're not all the same for every sim or every household or every story in every save, but there are a few that are more "universal" (for my universe) in nature.

    For example if I'm playing a vampire, newly turned ones typically aren't allowed to choose any powers at all; they must wait until they gain their first real rank, and even then they're only allowed to choose from the bottom tier. That pattern follows through the other ranks. Although they could technically gain the Vampire Creation power at the Minor Vampire rank, I don't allow them to actually take it until they're Prime rank or higher. Exceptions are made for those with two vampire parents (they gain some extra power points due to their lineage) or other special cases intended for specific story purposes. Only truly Elder Vampires (as in total time existed, not the Elder life stage) who have existed for at least 100 days more than a typical sim lifetime AND have completed the Master Vampire aspiration will be allowed to become the leader of an entire clan or any other social construct higher than a Familiar House (which itself can be founded with births, turned offspring, or both).

    As for more "normal" kind of gameplay (by other people's standards, not my own, lol), I only have one typical legacy-style family now (for a while I rotated between up to 5 different ones) because I found through trial and error that, while I do enjoy the occasional slightly more rigid structure inherent in that kind of play, I can't take it in very large doses at one time. So it takes a very long time to develop the generations. I don't play by any legacy challenge rules, though; my rules are my own based on what I've learned I can live with.

    And speaking of family play... the only other family play I do is when I need to do so for story purposes. Playing a family just for the sake of family play does very little for my personal enjoyment, so it's more typically a means to an end. I don't always play occult type stuff (usually vampires or spellcasters), either, because although I don't always get bored by such things, a laser-like focus on any one thing has a tendency to cause that thing to lose its luster for me if I overdo it. I find that it's like mental and creative exercise to give myself a break from one thing to do another for a while, and when I get back to the first thing my approach is fresher. :relaxed:
    FYI: Just because you can see my signature, don't assume that I can see yours.
    Because I can't; I keep all sigs turned off. ;)
  • duhboy2u2duhboy2u2 Posts: 3,290 Member
    edited April 2022

    Building
    I love building and its my favorite aspect of the Sims 4 even though I'm not that good at it. Typically I start out just building my own homes or redesigning Maxis ones, then end up redesigning/rebuilding everything. In. The. Entire. Game. Yes, it becomes almost obsessive. Then I'll start inventing things to build like theaters and video arcades. Sometimes I'll use things/lots from the Gallery when I find one I just love, but usually they don't get to stay long before I end up building over it or doing a complete redesign. (When I redesign something from the gallery I never re-upload it because it wasn't mine. Unless its something the original creator requested from the community; Or, when the OC was Maxis... in which case, credit where credit is due.)

    Game Play
    I usually play, aging on, short life span unless I just really love a sim/family, in which case I'll switch them to normal life span. Even when I really love a family, my curiosity about how their family line will turn out keeps me from turning off aging and keeping them forever. That said, I ALWAYS save a copy of my 1st generation to the gallery (like a wedding cake topper) for later use :smiley:

    My favorite way to play is family style, but I nearly always start with just one single adult or young adult sim. Usually young adult so that I have longer to get them where they need to be in life before they kick the bucket. I love diversity in my sims, so I often hunt for sims who are beautifully different from my founding/born-to-the-family sim.

    I like a mix of sizes, shapes, personalities, genders, skin tones, hair types/styles, eye colors, etc... so I rarely follow the Matriarchy/Patriarchy rules for Legacy style challenges. I think sims are delightfully genderless and just love who they love so its easy to allow them free range. :)

    I love my toddlers and have been known to frequently give them the "Independent" trait so that I can just play them through the "toddler years" without too much parental interference. I am a micromanager. Badly. My sims call me a nasty name and tell me to let them be free all the time. They think they need to relax and enjoy life...stop and smell the roses but I'm like, "NO! You go learn to paint! (or cook, or get strong, or....)You can relax when you've learned everything that life has to offer and you are an elder in your golden years!" I always let them retire when they hit elderhood unless they are a workaholic and want to keep working.


    TLdR: I had no idea I have so many rules for myself; But, oh well, its my game I guess so I can play how I like. My sandbox, my rules hehe! <3
    Loving yourself is the most simple and complicated thing you can do for you.
  • BloosmooBloosmoo Posts: 754 Member
    Hmm, I hadn't thought about this but when I did....

    I played one legacy once got to gen 3 when the founder died cried for an irl week and ageing has not gone on since

    I love pre-mades. Neighbourhood stories killed off Joaquin le Chein and I put him straight back into game not realizing his ghost and his physical clone self would become best friends. I like that, it's strange.

    I delete townies because I am that kind of monster and there will be no culling of my sims or premades if I can help it

    I build more than I play mainly because there aren't enough occults in the game and I love playing occults

    I have rebuilt the worlds about four times and it never gets old

    Which brings me to saves, I have at most two at a time otherwise I feel the pressure of tiny people waiting to get on with their lives so I set them free into the digital universe

    I like unconventional looking sims, so big ears, the Thorne Bailey nose (omg gorgeous!) gap teeth, all the teeth and Vlad is just the best, he's royalty. I have just put cc into my game and never again, never will I have hairless male sims it's a silly thing but the difference it makes is amazing.

    Also discovered mods recently and I'm having a blast with those too
  • SlackerSlacker Posts: 2,825 Member
    After reading a bit about folks different styles of play i started noticing i was missing out some... I am such a lazy random, and very picky player... My game is I create situations, and I play them out. Its my irl whims that i express thru the game mainly ! Also I've been a passionate builder for years, did the whole map twice... This time i build for keeps. Full unlimited budget so once i come to the point where i cant do better with a lot, i move on. I customize everything to my taste, i delete all townies that are ugly or kleptomaniac (i had a spew of those recently and then it calmed down lol) also I play w age off & full autonomy. My approach is of city planner perspective. I macro manage and do sit coms, to sum up !
    Gallrey ID: Le_Slacker
  • DaepheneDaephene Posts: 1,760 Member
    Rotational play will keep me engaged a lot longer than single household.

    Aging off is also too stagnant for me, I need generational as well as rotational change.

    I like a semi-realistic aging. None of the options in game line up properly for me as far as how old a sim will be when their first child ages up to YA or how long the infant stage lasts compared to the toddler, so I prefer to set my own lengths for each stage using MCCC.

    Taking screenshots is just part of gameplay for me now. I don't even post most of them on these forums anymore, I just enjoy the game more when I'm recording my sims' lives.

    I mostly ignore random townies, but if I adopt one I move them to the My households tab. Other Households are liable to be manually culled any time I get tired of seeing their outfits or weird hair/skin combos or 50 with the same last name.

    Manage Households is one of the reasons I would have trouble going back to Sims 2. Also time passing when you leave the lot, more world that you can explore from each lot, and prettier graphics.

    I like realism in certain areas, such as aging, but have no interest in a chore simulator. Only my off the grid sims do laundry, only my gardening sims use the lot challenge that requires the ingredients - real life drudgery work has to be part of a larger challenge to be fun in the game for me.

    I love incorporating occults but I am primarily a family player. Occult families are a staple but not the majority of my gameplay.

    I'm quite fond of planning out ideas for my sims long in advance and then changing the plan on a whim and having to make new plans around the changes.

    I'm never going to get the hang of building non-boxy structures. Downloading builds with exteriors that I like and remodeling to suit my needs is my best option.
  • OceancatOceancat Posts: 21 Member
    I always play on long lifespan but turn aging off periodically if I feel like things are going too fast. Every sim must reach their birthday to age up, even babies.
    I don't have every pack so I don't have a full selection of worlds, but my favorite to play in by far is San Myshuno. I just think it makes perfect sense for young adult sims to start out in apartments, rats and all. If I'd prefer a house I typically live in Willow Creek. I like to think of each world as being hours away from each other, so lately I've been putting rentals in all worlds and only letting my sims travel between if they are moving or going on vacation.
    I definitely notice myself coming back to the same skills and careers. Almost all my sims enjoy cooking and I get excited every time more recipes are added to the game. Many also enjoy gardening and I like to grow vegetables or herbs at every house. Writing and painting are also pretty common skills for my sims to have. For careers I typically choose the creative ones. I like working from home but I don't often play with a full on active career.
    I'd consider myself a mix of a rotational and legacy player, but it is rare that I get very far with a legacy. If my sims' children do have time to age up I like to play with all of them. I also like to have a few townies that are somehow involved in the story. Any close friend of my sims will at least get a makeover.
    Speaking of makeovers, I always end up spending a ton of time in CAS. I have some CC particularly for facial features or areas of CAS I feel are lacking in the game, but I try to limit my amount of CC. I am not a good builder and will often download community lots from the gallery but I find my homes are more meaningful if I build them myself, even if they aren't the prettiest.
  • MoonlightGrahamMoonlightGraham Posts: 884 Member
    edited April 2022
    Compared to many of you, I am a very new Simmer. I've been playing TS4 for less than a year, so my game style is still evolving.

    First of all, The Sims is an activity I share with my 13-year-old daughter. I asked her if she wanted her own copy of the game for her birthday, and she told me she'd rather keep sharing the game with me. (I'm not sorry, because I love being Z's Simming buddy.)

    I am not a builder, although I wish I were. I love domestic architecture, and I would love to be able to design houses for my Sims. I don't have the time to find out if I'd ever acquire that skill. Instead, I've spent hours looking at lots in the Gallery and placing my favorites in my game. I've probably created a half-dozen different versions of Newcrest that way. Currently, I'm using @SweetieWright_84 's save, and I am having a blast with it.

    My daughter thoroughly enjoys creating Sims. We're in a stage right now where our worlds are almost exclusively filled with Sims she's created, or that we've found on the Gallery. While we don't dislike the premades, we're having fun with our alternate cast.

    We have collected all 11 Expansion Packs, and a number of Game Packs and Kits. My "main character" often lives in Brindleton Bay or Newcrest. The "story save" Z and I have created features a young adult Sim who is living in his retired grandparents' home in Brindleton Bay. He grew up in Willow Creek, and his family still live there. His grandparents are living their best life in Sulani.

    I almost always play with 28-day seasons and with aging off. We enjoy the changing seasons, and like to have our Sims experience more than one game year at each stage of their lives. When we decide it's time to age our Sims up, we do it. We'll also age up the Sims who are part of their supporting cast. The largest household I've tried to manage contains four Sims, none younger than a Child, and a dog. I don't rotate between families often, and I don't do it systematically. We'll say "Let's see what Tim and Ava are doing," or "We haven't played Mark and Trevor for a while, have we?" and off we go to play their households for a bit.

    I unashamedly play in a Simworld that is generally happy and mainly drama-free. My wife and I are teachers. I played TS1 some as a teenager, and I resumed Simming as a way to relax and unwind. I can't control what happens in the larger world around me, but I can control what happens in The Sims. I've always enjoyed happy endings, and I find myself wanting that kind of calmness even more these days.
    Exie hay, cavero, veebo marz viremzico.
    Exie hay, cavero, mabza meeah vendarzo.
    Yevsas mairzeemo!
  • SimsILikeSimsSimsILikeSims Posts: 1,634 Member
    edited April 2022
    I play with "age only the current household", and play rotationally. I might turn neighborhood stories on if I saw something like I did in TS2 where a neighbor childhood friend is still a child when the Sim is going to Uni. I have tried the scenarios, but never stuck around long enough to complete any of them. Besides, my computer is about 5 years old and has been acting up, and then I have to spend the time I wanted to spend on my game troubleshooting it till it works. Or I have to update a lot of other stuff on my computer since I work a full time job and don't always get it done during the week after work. Or, I have to get my keychain flashlight and plug some cables back in that the cats were playing with (usually the mouse, the keyboard, or the speakers/headphones).

    So... legacy challenges are definitely not for me.

    I love custom content in my game. Love it. Stuff is there for the taking like decorations made functional, realistic eyelashes, hats that are really wigs, wings, more sandal options and sandals that come up with the swimwear tag (think waterproof flip flops, or even crocs etc), and an outdoor plant that cats can use as a litter box. Or, mods to make the existing outdoor woohoo/pee bushes functional for both pets and Sims. I love having even more food options, and even a kitchen blender to make juice. (I miss the Sims 2 blender where Sims could actually make boot juice....with predictable results. Talk about eating your shoe....I think eating a hat would be just slightly tastier) I've even seen dresses with handkerchief hems, and rounded beds.
    I have been playing The Sims since 2001, when Livin Large came out. My avatar deliberately looks like Chris Roomies from TS1.
  • JALJAL Posts: 1,001 Member
    With reservation for my playing style changing in different saves, there are a few things that come again.
    • I tend to focus on one main family or sim, but sometimes rotate to their family members and friends to avoid getting bored.
    • I always use custom life span because I need the game to progress slowly and more naturally.
    • I once tried to play one sim year = one year (including a 9 week pregnancy) - it got really, really boring. One sim year = 5 went better for a while but also got boring. I have given up on having birthdays on the same day of the year at the moment. Now 2 days = 1 year.
    • I make some skills a lot harder (for example parenting, cooking and gardening) while letting others be normal difficulty.
    • I start challenges but has yet to finish one - generally they get me inspired to start, but I hate following rules in the long run.
    • I want every NPC to have a home, so no homeless sims in my game. My current Newcrest has 5 high rise buildings for single NPCs, Windenburg has a terraced house (four houses) and I have a collective in Sulani with several huts and a joint kitchen and bathroom. In Oasis Springs I use Yuma Heights as a home for the elderly to make room for new families.
    • I micromanage NPCs but still want them to evolve on their own so I keep neighborhood stories on, and add MCC for marriages and have notifications on for everything. I generally have moving out/in, adoptions and leaving jobs off - but turn them on if I think that option could be a twist for the individual family. I turn having babies off when I think a certain family wouldn't have more kids.
    • A couple moving out of their house (if I have allowed it) means they are divorcing. I then use MCC to make that happen and move them apart.
    • Whenever a sim age up to YA I go into their family and enroll the sim in University and move them out of the house - or give them a job and move them into an apartment (unless I have a reason for letting them stay at home).
    • Once a week I go into the housing in Britchester and use cheats to make sure all sims pass their terms and start them on new ones.
    • Once they graduate I give them jobs and move them into a home.
    • When they marry I try to find them a family home.
    • If a sim dies, they die. No saving anyone, NPC or played character.
    • I have made exceptions to that, because consistency is not my strength when playing.
    • I use clubs a lot to create active lots in game
    • I like using the prebuilds but change them and turn them into something else or just mod them. So Nerval arms is a diner/movie theatre, The Futures Past is a nightclub and the Blue Note a jazz-bar. Just as a few examples.
    • I need mods to play and there are mods I will not play without.
    Moreover, I advise that the cart button must be destroyed!
  • GlacierSnowGlacierSnow Posts: 2,301 Member
    edited April 2022
    Rather than give a full list of all the key elements of how I play, here are the things I've genuinely learned about my play-style:

    1) Every piece of CAS and build mode items will eventually get used. I create so many characters and so many settings for my multitude of saves and stories, that even that thing I thought was super ugly and useless will eventually find a sim for whom it is perfect.

    2) Taking screenshots is super fun for me. I stopped holding myself back, and I take as many as I want now. When I started running out of space, I got a bigger hard-drive.

    3) I need a bonding period with new sims to decide if I will play them more or not. Sometimes it takes four or five sessions to make up my mind. I let that happen. And then, if they are not firing up my imagination at that point, I let them go.

    4) Sometimes sims I stopped playing with make great background characters for other stories. When I need extras and walk-ons for a story, I often pull unused sims from other saves to fill those rolls. And sometimes, now that they are in a new context and story, they turn out to be more interesting and important than they originally were.

    5) I like to be nice to my sims, unless I'm writing an actual story. Typically, when I am just playing a rambling storyline with no planned out plot, my sims lead happy, uneventful lives, surrounded by things they enjoy and people who care about them. And that's fine. If I'm actually writing a story, though, I plan out the conflicts.

    6) What I enjoy most in life is making things and working on creative projects. So, I've come to accept that roughly 80% of my time "playing" the sims isn't really playing it as a game, but rather using it as a creative platform for whatever project I'm excited about. Might be building something. Might be writing a story. Might be making custom poses, or doing recolors of objects. Might be trying to make the worlds into my own fantasy or sci-fi settings, might just be spending the time to get a really great screenshot. Actual gameplay as intended by the designers if often something I completely ignore or mod out of existence. This is what's fun for me, so I don't bother worrying about it anymore.
    Forum-Banner-01.jpg
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    My name on AHQ (and the upcoming sims forum) is "GlacierSnowGhost".
  • bshag4lvbshag4lv Posts: 9,374 Member
    edited April 2022
    I have changed my play up just a little...I changed lifespans from long to normal. No one was dying in my games, the only ones who were, were the farm animals. So, normal lifespan it is.

    I play with full autonomy on and only intervene when my sim is going to do something truly dumb, like playing in the rain during a thunderstorm, doh!

    My games have happy sims through no fault of mine. I like to make sure they all have a few skills that will help them in their careers, or money making activities. Many of my sims have jobs from home and some are talented enough to earn a living with little real hard work involved. Most of my sims are occult, spellcasters or vampires, I don't like servos or aliens so much and I'm thinking about mermaids in Sulani.

    Most sims are single, in or out of a relationship and if they are married they are limited to one kid unless, God forbid, twins or triplets, gah!

    I only have 2 sims who have dogs. I hate the cats in the Sims 4 and so my sims are without. It's okay if townies have them as long as they take care of them. I hate Brindleton Bay because of the homeless animals so I don't play that neighborhood.

    I love Eco lifestyle and many of my sims are makers and make a very good living at it. I learned about money trees the hard way, and now I don't play them anymore...rich sims are boring to play.

    I love my mods and all my cc. Can't seem to warm up to vanilla games when there is so much good stuff out there. ;)

    I will never use rabbithole careers anymore due to work from home and active careers are so much better.

    My sims travel all over everywhere no matter which neighborhood they live in.

    I will usually start out in any of them with the exception of BB. My sims are mostly outdoorsy, creative, fit and very handy. No repairmen needed as most can "Repario." All their devices and appliances are fully upgraded with eco upgrade parts so to keep the bills down. I set NAPS on the mailboxes as soon as I move a sim in and they never change.

    All my sims age up when they are supposed to except when a particular favorite caster can brew Rejuvenation Potion. :D

    In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
  • EricasFreePlayEricasFreePlay Posts: 849 Member
    In Sims 2, I enjoy family gameplay. I have not played any Sims past University in a long time which is why I deleted my old game and decided to start new. I tried this in Sims 3 and 4 but it was just not as exciting and I would get bored with those games. I would go back to Sims 2 because the mechanics of that game to me are better than the latter games.

    When the game first came out, I would play a family from the pre-made families through their current ages until they got to Elder and then stop before they die (I still do this. I have yet to let a Sim Elder pass away). University changed this BIG TIME with the addition of college and the Young Adult life stage although it was limited to University.

    When University got added, I play the Young Adult life stage as if it was an extension of the Teen life stage. My Sims have their first romantic relationships. If they are already in one as Teens and both Sims age up, I then just re-establish the relationship as Young Adults. They have time to earn extra friends and skills. I used to stop here and just let them move into a new house in the base neighborhood and go right back to college with a different Sim.

    I will be going back to my original family gameplay style that I used to enjoy before University got added. I may even let a few Senior Sims pass finally. I just haven't decided yet.
  • KyreRoenKyreRoen Posts: 677 Member
    edited April 2022
    Had to narrow it down to things I've noticed, but never gave much credit:
    • I love homes that have just enough space for their intended inhabitants, requiring clever remodeling solutions if expansion is needed. This usually means tiny homes for single sims (generally bunkers, vehicle conversions, and other alternative habitats), and mid-sized homes for large families. Too much space disinterests me.
    • I love manipulating NPC's through my sims. From speech-checks, to mind powers, to AI prediction. I once turned TS4 into a stealth game with my vampire burglar- called a sim out of a room, then took the seconds it'd take for them to go to that spot (taking into account the time the getting up animation would take) to loop around and head into that room, then steal the laptop (which would guarantee I had time to search the room for more goodies, given their AI would no longer have a reason to go in there).
    • I get bored when a sim cheats. This is why I usually go for polyamory or open relationships when it comes to multiple lovers.
    Post edited by KyreRoen on
    Check out my 'Simming Tips' for detailed tips and tricks (TS4).
  • naeshellenaeshelle Posts: 62 Member
    This is a fun prompt! Love reading all of the responses. Here are some things I've observed about my own gameplay:

    - I absolutely must play with autonomy OFF. I also have a bunch of autonomy mods that turn off different autonomous actions (word to bienchen).
    - I love holidays in the game & regularly create my own.
    - There are certain mods I refuse to play without: Wonderful Whims, MCCC & UI Cheats Extension being chief among them. I straight up will not update my game until those mods are compatible with the newest game version.
    - I love aliens! I have a whole alien legacy & love letting aliens into the family whenever possible. I have some alien skins (Star Skin by ratboysims) & alien eyes (Plumblob's TS4 conversion of Mouseyblue's TS2 'Dust' eyes) that are absolutely GORGEOUS & make playing aliens so much more fun.
    - I really enjoy playing with families. 5+ sims is my jam. I especially love toddlers & teens. I don't really care for playing elderly sims because it makes me sad when I have to watch them die, so I abandon households before I have to see my played sims pass away.
    - Almost all my heirs are women. I think it's because I just enjoy playing sims that are women more than I like playing with sims that are men (there is a direct correlation between my level of enjoyment & the amount of CC I have installed for either gender, not gonna lie).
    - As a result of the fact that I was forced to share a room with my sister all throughout my childhood & teenage years, all of my homes are big enough for every sim to have their own room. The obvious exception is romantically involved sims, who share rooms (unless a sim is romantically involved with more than one partner, in which case they all have their own rooms).
    - My two most used cheats: cas.fulleditmode + freerealestate on
    - I would consider myself a legacy player. I've never created a sim without the intention of creating a legacy & them eventually having a family.
    - I can get into ruts where my sims never leave their homes very easily. This typically happens in larger families, not with single sims. I noticed this around the start of quarantine, like I was forcing my sims to quarantine with me lol. One thing I'm doing to combat this is having each of my sims leave their house at least twice a week. It's working pretty well!
    - My sims don't stay in their world at all. I like to imagine each different world like a different neighborhood, unless I'm doing a challenge. In which case, I deduct simoleons for travel in the same world & I make my sim get a "passport" (a §1,000 fee) to go to other worlds.
  • SheriSim57SheriSim57 Posts: 6,934 Member
    I love rotational play.

    My sims interact, and are mostly in clubs with other sims I play

    I like a lot of different types of families and households, it keeps me from getting bored.

    I play with aging off mostly because I get attached to my sims.

    My sims have varied jobs, likes, dislikes, reputations, fufilled aspirations, skills and hobbies and a few have celebrity status or are working up to it.

    Most of my sims visit other lots fairly often.

    I like medium sized homes, I never use extremely large ones.

    Most of my sims earn their money for the stuff they buy, except for the original 20 thousand they start with. Some households like the Landgrabbs own many businesses and I do cheat with them.

    I don’t much play with Occults, although I do have twin spellcasters.

    I don’t use CC so I enjoy all the kits and stuff packs as well as gameplay and expansion packs.


  • ThriorThrior Posts: 612 Member
    edited April 2022
    • I alternate between long life span and aging off. I never age up my sims prematurely. I always need to have that life-stage bar filled.
    • I don’t really have much rhyme or reason to how I play. Semi-rotationally I guess but I basically pay no attention to any timelines and just play the family I feel like playing. The only exception is families related to each other. I for example have triplet brothers and I really want to keep them like that so that when they age up they’ll do so at the same time.
    • I tend to keep just one save. Well, multiple actually for safety but I mean I have no “New Games” started except for some very specific purposes.
    • I like to “preserve” premades as background characters. Sometimes they might get more involved (and even die) but most of the time I just keep them around ad infinitum because they are more detailed/distinctive from some randomly generated townies.
    • I always start a Sims game with a family of one male sim. Also, the sim I started TS4 with was kinda paying homage to my TS3 one while the TS3 one was paying homage to my TS2 sim (though in this case not the guy I started with, just a favorite). If I ever get to TS5 I’m pretty sure the cycle will continue. (Btw I played TS1 too but I can't remember what was my first family, though my most memorable ones were again the single male ones.)
    • I don’t like to force stories. I tend to use autonomy/whims as a guide (I have mods improving both) and also roll with unexpected things that happen in the game. I often actually just observe what my sims do, I don’t like to micromanage them. Sometimes I might have a pretty clear idea of how I’m going to roleplay a sim but it might change, heavily influenced by whatever shenanigans happen in the game. For example, I was going to play my first TS4 couple as very faithful but then BOTH of them accidentally started a romantic interest relationship because I didn't realize certain interactions were romantic. I just decided to roll with it and RP them as a couple who have a mutual open-ish relationship, i.e. flirting around is allowed but nothing further. I’m now glad this happened because it opened the door for some later hilarity like the husband having a love-hate thing with the Grim Reaper.
    • I tend to deliberately give my sims flaws so that there’s some “negative” aspect to their character, either via traits or gameplay. I have intentionally sabotaged the character values too because I don’t want every single sim to be responsible and good mannered. Some of the first mods I utilized were ones making things like skill gains more difficult. Grew tired how, if you play with long life span or aging off, basically all sims can become masters of everything. Now I’m even using MCCC to freeze skills which IMO don’t fit the character. With my vampires I choose weaknesses that fit the character, never meta-gaming it by choosing the "best" (i.e. least intrusive) ones.
    • I realized I once again don’t seem to have a single “traditional happy family” lol, i.e. a mother and a father with their kids all happily ever after. This has been something that’s been going on since my TS2 days. Some might have had the proper setup but then there always seems to happen something that don’t make them quite “normal”. Like a bunch of occults mixed in or there’s something wrong like the family members hating each other or someone having an affair or whatever. That’s not to say I don’t have happy families but for some reason I just seem to gravitate away from the “traditional families”. I guess I just get bored with them. Like, I got interested in this townie family with 6 kids ONLY after NS decided to kill off the mother. I was like “this can make for a good story/challenge”.
    • I take TONS of screenshots but am then too lazy to share them anywhere.
    • My favorite sims almost always end up being occults (partly helped with my tendency to preserve favorite sims by making them immortal which often meant vampires). However, while I favor my occults I still like to keep their numbers in check because if there were too many I think they'd lose what makes them special.
    • My interests are strictly focused on gameplay and the sims themselves. I am and have always been a completely hopeless builder. Doesn't seem to matter how easy they make it. Decorating can be fun for me but gosh do I hate building. Gotta say one of the things I like about TS4 the most is that I can just easily download other peoples' creations and then just edit them to my liking.
    Post edited by Thrior on
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