As a rotational player, I am adjusting my gameplay style due to my decision to play without mods (if you rotate without mods to a lot of households your sims sadly lose relationships and I don't want this to happen).
What I would like to ask all you non-rotational players is what you find enjoyable about sticking to only one or two households only. What keeps you motivated to play those same sims and how do you change things up now and again? Also, do you play more than one saved game in order to play different sims?
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And yes, I tend to put different sims in their own save, and save a copy of the family to bin.
Alot of it is attachment. Sim in my avatar has been around ever since Supernatural came out basically, 530 days old or so, 19 children, etc...
Another save, the sim is over 200 days old, and has fathered 115 or so children in total.
I enjoy that most because it's "new". The relationships develop with new people and I don't feel like I need to make sure something doesn't happen to "upset" my story line because this is a "new story" .... so if Bob & Eliza suddenly decide to become an extremely happy boho hippy commune loving couple, they can! I don't have to worry about them veering off the "we hate each other" story line.
I just really enjoy starting fresh, I guess. Maybe I want my current sim to fall in love with Don Lothario, but in another save he's already happily involved with someone else, and I don't ever play intentional cheating sims (had a few instances of infidelity happen to me in RL so that's not my jam, regardless of what sim I'm playing.)
I also tend not to stick with one legacy for too long, which is something I want to fix. Maybe playing rotationally would improve my desire to stick with one save? But I definitely have a preference for playing one set of Sims, because I usually have one storyline or legacy challenge I'm trying to fulfill.
Sometimes I like to use the Legacy Challenge randomizer for what to do that week if I get bored and want to spice up a plain, non-challenge legacy save, or any variety of "Spin the wheel!" things that Simmers have come up with to decide what they wanna do. Gives it a lil injection of something fun.
I’m doing the opposite to you though and starting a small rotation as I’m building an extended family for my sims 😁.
You can try add (you said you play without mods, but not sure about cheats) the Beloved trait (reward for completing Friend of the World aspiration) that halts any relationship decay of the Sim.
And then I get bored. Whether it's of the sims, or of The Sims in general and then don't play for a period of time. The problem with that is I forget everything about my sims. I'm trying to type up info in the household tab now to combat that a bit. But I'll literally make sims and then forget why I made them the way I did and then I can't play them anymore. So then I have to just start over with a new save.
I don't even know the last time I had a multigenerational family, that wasn't made that way from the beginning, or like the parents were added in after. Mostly my sims might get married, maybe have kids, and I'm gone before the kids get to college. And since I don't let my person sims become elders, I end up hoping around a lot. And my sims are still alive in other saves. I've got saves that didn't even have toddlers yet. I've got a save from when toddlers first came.
I do use all the mods though. It helps me set up the stories I want without too much stress and then I can play what I want. Especially since I'm constantly starting over.
SIMS 3:
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/863178/the-sims-3-50-foals-challenge#latest
The only time it may turn rotational is when the children of my families move out.
All the sims err'day
Their story is here.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/1005742/my-super-sim-family-challenge#
It's not really a story. Mostly documentation of accomplishments to help me keep track of who has done what.
However, I do have a long-term project in that I am slowly diverging each save so that they are completely different from each other. For example, my legacy family lives in worlds full of big houses for happy, growing families. In the mischief and mayhem save, my Sims are creating chaos and hurt relationships among the townies.
And then I also sort of try to balance the four saves so that they are always at different stages. When one save has three children, another family is childless. One save has aging off, the others are on. Cats in one save, a single dog in another, no pets in the other two.
So I always have a Sim game ready to go that appeals to me in that moment, whether I have fifteen minutes before work and just want to fiddle around with a pair of Sims, or if I want a marathon hard session where I'm trying to get three children to be world-famous at the same time without any cheats.
Updated with Werewolf Diaries (1)
There's lots of ideas I've picked up from people's replies, so thank you all for contributing.
@musteni maybe it's because I rotate away for probably a whole sim year? I have a lot of households in my game and by the time I get back to one they have lost their friends. The only relationships they still have are their own household members and even those are at different levels. It frustrates me no end that EA decided not to freeze relationships when you are not playing someone, it's a ridiculous choice.
The only exception is my supersim who is completing all aspirations. She has a little break now but I will return once my growing together test family has raised their children.
I think there are a couple reasons why I like sticking with one household. The main one is that I just get emotionally involved in what those specific sims are doing, and become very attached to them. I don't really want to play other households in that save, because then I wouldn't be playing with the main one. I don't like seeing my main sims walking around in public places doing things that don't fit their story when I am not able to control them.
I play with aging turned off because I'm not really interested in generational play. What appeals to me about sticking with one set of sims for a very long time is being able to create very complex stories for them in my head (regardless of whether I write the stories down or not). Spending so much time with them makes them really come alive for me as characters and people. There is plenty of time for subtle details, backstory, subplots, random adventure arcs, complex relationships, and character growth.
I take a TON of screenshots. Sometimes upwards of 100 screenshots during a single play session. I save them in separate folders for each save. I give them captions so I know what was going on story-wise in my head when I took them. Those screenshots help me think about the story as I am playing. And if I go away for a long time, I can use the screenshots to remind me what was happening in the story when I come back.
I will say that right now my playstyle is hindered by the bug that makes sims keep moving when the game is paused. That makes it hard for me to capture precise moments in the story with screenshots. So, lately, I have been not playing with a lot of my main household saves very much. I've been focusing on my more heavily staged simlit saves and my more superficial "messing around" play saves instead. Hopefully this will get fixed though.
All this input from you peeps, I'm actually looking forward to starting some non-rotational saves after work tonight, I was feeling quite sad about it yesterday so thank you all
-Yes, person I barely know, you have my blessing to hang out with Johnny Zest.
-No person with the mean, hot-headed and self-absorbed traits, I don't think you should get married.
Maybe I want Phoenix Valentine to make as many Sim-babies as possible. That doesn't mean I want everyone in town to be related to him. Maybe I want to turn everyone to vampires, or have everyone eventually marry into my legacy. Every now and then I delete some old saves that I'll never got back to (the experiment is complete, for example). But yes, many saves. So many saves, lol.
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