I have a bunch of savefiles and just jump in and out of the one I feel like playing for the day. I'm very much a Challenge player, and most challenges call for you to play only one family per save, so I'm used to it because of that
I'm quite enjoying it so far. I've been playing 8 sims at uni and will split them into different saves now they have graduated - then I can do different stuff with each. I've also got a save with an infant and her artist mum.
It's actually going to be quite nice to just pick which save I'm in the mood for and play that, as sometimes it felt a bit ordered and restrictive doing my rotations.
@elanorbreton, I've read this thread with interest because I've always played rotationally except when I was doing a challenge. But I just rotated back to one family and found that the infant had lost all his milestones except being born and first smile. So I need to come up with something else.
I never play rotationally. If I want a new family, I start a new save. Occasionally I'll go back to an old save, but usually I just play one save until I'm bored with it, then start a new one and repeat.
I play non-rotationally in terms of save files. I really like building and town planning, so I have one gameplay save, and another save that's more like a sandbox for building.
In my gameplay save, I have about a dozen Played Households. I haven't noticed their relationships change significantly. I've adjusted settings so that my played households don't auto-age up etc. This way whenever I feel like playing that household again, it's more or less the same as when I left it. Occasionally a significant townie will die while I'm playing another household, but I just move on regardless as part of the gameplay.
@elanorbreton, I've read this thread with interest because I've always played rotationally except when I was doing a challenge. But I just rotated back to one family and found that the infant had lost all his milestones except being born and first smile. So I need to come up with something else.
It is very sad that EA don't seem to cater for rotational players with things like this.
I've only stopped rotating because I didn't want to be forced to use corrective mods any more.
There is absolutely no reason why anything should change while we are playing a different household. By now There should be a 'leave household in statis' option.
I completed my uni sims and split them up between saves in their new homes but I am constantly re-saving when one household updates with something new. I just can't get my head around not playing them all in the same save! I might have to have a mini rotational game for them and play separate saves for totally unrelated sims.
@Flap do you know if that works properly now? I had read previously that the beloved trait only works for one sim per saved game.
@musteni@Brd709@IndiiAna do you peeps all play vanilla? If so, how many households and how long are you away each time to manage to keep friends relationships?
@elanorbreton, I've read this thread with interest because I've always played rotationally except when I was doing a challenge. But I just rotated back to one family and found that the infant had lost all his milestones except being born and first smile. So I need to come up with something else.
Horrifying flashbacks to Sims 3. They lose data when you switch families now? I've never seen that before in Sims 4. In the past,
when I went back to a previous family after playing another they still had the same psychology.
-No, my almost-elderly mother, I don't think it's a good time for you to try for a baby.
-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.
I use different saves. My main save is my supersim. If I get bored, I start a new save for a little while, but soon grow far more bored with that new save, and return to my supersim.
Sometimes I upload my supersim, and download her into a new save and do something very different with her for a bit, like change her age. I treat it like a dream, delete the save file when I am done, and go back to my main game.
I completed my uni sims and split them up between saves in their new homes but I am constantly re-saving when one household updates with something new. I just can't get my head around not playing them all in the same save! I might have to have a mini rotational game for them and play separate saves for totally unrelated sims.
@Flap do you know if that works properly now? I had read previously that the beloved trait only works for one sim per saved game.
@musteni@Brd709@IndiiAna do you peeps all play vanilla? If so, how many households and how long are you away each time to manage to keep friends relationships?
I play vanilla, over 30 households, rotating irregularly. I can be gone from one household for a very long time (several sim years). Like I mentioned losing friends has mostly happened on acquaintance level. Maybe it depends how many friends your sim has? Mine usually have just a few + relatives.
@musteni@Brd709@IndiiAna do you peeps all play vanilla? If so, how many households and how long are you away each time to manage to keep friends relationships?
I play with custom content and mods. I usually reset the parents of each household's age back to the start if they are near the end of the life stage if i'm not ready for them to age up yet. Or i play until all the kids in the household have aged up if their birthdays are close to each others.
I play vanilla, over 30 households, rotating irregularly. I can be gone from one household for a very long time (several sim years). Like I mentioned losing friends has mostly happened on acquaintance level. Maybe it depends how many friends your sim has? Mine usually have just a few + relatives.
Hmmm... interesting. My sims tend to just have a few friends and relatives. Maybe I'll try again cos I haven't been vanilla for a year or so, maybe an update changed things?
I have multiple Saves going with different themes but stick to one household in each of those Saves. In one of my Saves, it's 100 Baby Challenge. The other Save is Not So Berry Challenge & the other Save is the original Legacy Challenge, that I finished to Gen 10 but decided to keep it going with no rules or scoring. By having 3 entirely different Saves...that's what keeps me motivated, as they're all different and I can explore different aspects of gameplay.
I will mention that I am also a rotational player. I do have a Save dedicated to like 20 households I rotate between. It's occult/supernatural theme and I've kept it going since vampires GP. But I do enjoy the non-rotational game play with different Saves dedicated to different things as mentioned above.
When I'm not in the mood for my big rotational saves I usually pop into my Perrin family save. They're a couple I've been playing since early sims 3 days I remade in the sims 4. I usually have multiple saves with them but I always start them off living separate and seeing how they meet again, always playing her side and have him move in. I play them with aging off and have them experience whatever new feature while still keeping them in character. I ts3 they had a daughter and eventually died of old age but now I don't let them age. In some saves they might have kids, they might not. Their house will look different and their home world will change. I start them off rags to riches style and develop the house as they earn money, in a house lot or in an apartment.
To keep things fresh I make them friends in CAS, I never play them but I make sure they have full families, houses and jobs. I also made her parents and added a brother, I'll probably do something for him too but haven't been very inspired yet. Usually what ends up happening (and I hate that it's always the case) their house becomes too laggy because of all their collections and things so instead of moving them I just restart sadly. If I had aging on, it's like from starting a sim to when their kids are young adult. Back when I played legacies that's usually when I'd get "bored" but it wasn't boredom, it was lag and seeing how deformed the genetics made my kids look so I gave up on generational play.
Some other ideas, I had a barbie save back in ts3, basically playing barbie as a supersim maxing all careers. I made her a big pink mansion and would recolor everyone and everything in sunset valley in pink/turquoise/flashy pop colors. That's a good one for when you feel a little down. And then no really a rotation but playing all the premades. Aging off, pick a household and play them until you think they're "done", then move on to somebody else. I did that with Ned Whalen, made him climb up the tech guru career, then he decided to become a scientist, met his alien wife. Nowadays he's just the weird nerdy dad inviting people to barbecues. I moved on to other households, I'll never play them once they're done but it's nice that they are in the save, familiar faces and all that.
@Flap do you know if that works properly now? I had read previously that the beloved trait only works for one sim per saved game.
Can't guarantee 100% but I think it works now, all mentions to be broken are very dated (2017 and before).
I started a new rotational with the Infant update so time will tell me if Summer and Zoe (I guess they both have the FotW aspiration) will maintain the relationships they acquired
I just started a 31 generation Not So Berry Challenge and I'm considering playing the non-heir siblings a little bit. I want to make sure they all get married and have kids so that the family tree grows. Not sure how I'll manage it though since I almost never play rotationally.
@becks1112 If you don't mind a bit of randomness you can use the Neighborhood Stories feature. It will do everything for you except find spouses for your unplayed sims-- if you want them to get married and have biological children you still have to do the marriage part yourself.
Or come to think of it NS might generate biological children for engaged couples too? I'm pretty sure I've seen some younger Charms and Ernests about...
@mightysprite Yes, if you set that household to "Have Baby" in NS, and the couple are engaged and at least one of them can get pregnant, they can have babies without being married. I very, very strongly advise against turning babies and adoptions on globally.
-No, my almost-elderly mother, I don't think it's a good time for you to try for a baby.
-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.
As new packs were added to the game, along with the new features and activities in those packs, my rotational saves grew smaller. There were just too many things to keep up with when trying to give each played household the opportunity to experience everything the new packs had to offer. Pets became problematic so only a few households had a cat or a dog because the pets' needs were always in the red when I returned. Seasons with the calendar and holidays also affected how many households I had in my saves. In the past I had one save with over 70 households but only five were played on a regular basis. And I drove myself crazy trying to give all the Sims in that save successful holidays and a vacation once in a while. Along with the skills they needed to just survive being left on their own.
Now, with Growing Together, I have had to compromise again and keep only the Sims that are integral to my story. I started this save with eight YAs with parents and a teen aged sibling still living with the parents of the YAs I was playing. The eight YAs were all the best of friends and did everything together as a group. Now their time is split between their friends and their respective parents and siblings. It wasn't long before I realized that it was going to be another save I would have to downsize, and I moved four of the eight YAs and their families to another save of their own. Maintaining close family ties is important to me because this is what I have been waiting for since 2017. But at the same time, I want my Sims to have special friends, too. My YAs have the family they were born into and a family they chose to have which is made up of special friends they are very close to. My vision is for their children to become friends and grow up together, hopefully becoming BFFs as their parents did. The siblings of my YAs have met through school, and I am hoping they will become friends as well. In order to accomplish this, I play with aging off because I am in no rush to make it all happen too soon. And I'd like to see some of the bugs and glitches eradicated before my YAs marry and have babies.
I am and always have been a rotational player. It isn't easy but I become bored playing the same Sims. I tried to stick with just one Sim many times, but I find it too easy, and their lives quickly become somewhat meaningless after a while. I do have two saves that are centered around one Sim that I play if I'm not in the mood to play a houseful of Sims. And I am grateful we have the option to play differently when we want to. It all comes down to have a choice. I like having choices.
I play one family per save, other than my usual premade rotation save, but it becomes rotational often with the first born in game generation when they become YAs and start their own families. It's why I try to keep legacies to one kid lol...genetacies require 3 per generation. I don't have issues with lost relationships though - each household is played for a sim week - but I do have MCCC and it could be due to my settings. Like turning off that stupid sim culling, emotional deaths and adopting neglected kids - can't see myself ever NOT playing with it, honestly, the tuner stops so many annoying autonomous actions lol.
Well, having tried to just do a little setting up in my game with girlfriends/boyfriends and friends, I discovered that ALL relationships now get lost if you rotate away by even as little as a few sim days. My sims are no longer even friends with their flat-mates and don't even know the sim they were dating just a couple of days ago
So I guess rotational play is now no longer possible unless mods are used.
Since I just put 24 sims through uni (in batches of 8) I guess I'm going to have an awful lot of separate save games I will need.
I find it exceedingly hard to pull away from my characters. For instance, Erik is a Rock Star, thanks, in part, to the mod Road to Fame. Once I learned he could start winning Starlight Accolades for his own written music, I fear leaving him, as those Award Shows are weekly, for one. Plus, he has rabbit hole concerts and photoshoots for income. Leaving even for a day could be disastrous.
Same with my ancestral save which isn't active at this moment. I would pop over to the other households just long enough to get the next baby born and/or aged up to be consistent with the historical timeline of my family. But, I much prefer playing my 6th great-grandparents over their parents' families.
I haven't seen that with more than one household, I dropped them in game and they forgot each other, my other rotations seem to be fine still. I wonder why the culling gets turned up to eleven at random...
Reddestiny921 on the gallery...still not sure if I capitalized the second d..lol
All the sims err'day
I wish sometimes I could play non rotationally but for me it's a bust. Even in Sims 3 where rotational play was...challenging to say the least, I did rotate. But I did limit myself within one family dynamic. I started with 1 family and then when the kids grew up some of them of course moved out so I started to rotate between the 'main' household and theirs. I had about 3-4 households in that saved game. But I needed mods to do that, especially the super-mod that gives you more control over the game (kinda like the MCCC mod) and it wasn't easy. I did loose one adult kid because she 'moved away' because I did something wrong in the settings of the super-mod (I can't really remember its name).
In my main saved game I have over 30 households in my rotational and in every saved game I have tried to go with only one household and even wanting to recreate the rotation play I had in my Sims 3 gameplay, I fail. I think my attention span has lowered as I have gotten older.
I haven't seen that with more than one household, I dropped them in game and they forgot each other, my other rotations seem to be fine still. I wonder why the culling gets turned up to eleven at random...
It's bizarre. I tested it out in another save and my sims kept relationships over a short period so I've no idea why the other save lost them all immediately.
@GalacticGal I can understand that as it is a pain for certain careers/studies if you are rotating, eg. I always ended up playing uni students for a whole term and actors until they completed both their audition and gig.
I've been playing a single household, got them started in jobs, got them through their wedding preparations and the ceremony, they are saving up to buy a vet surgery... but I want to move on and start progressing some of their friends lives too.
I started a new save for their friends but it's just... meh. The original sims are not yet married in this save, everything is back to how it was. I can't get my head around it, because I still want all their lives to be richly intertwined.
I can see the appeal of different saves if you're playing totally unrelated games but I don't think I can separate mine. And I keep trying to just stick to one household but it seems I'm not suited to that kind of gameplay lol. I get to a certain point and I'm just itching to see other sims develop.
I want to thank everyone for their contributions in this thread, but it seems like I'm a lost cause! Looks like I will have to reinstall MCCC and rotate away!!!!
Comments
It's actually going to be quite nice to just pick which save I'm in the mood for and play that, as sometimes it felt a bit ordered and restrictive doing my rotations.
In my gameplay save, I have about a dozen Played Households. I haven't noticed their relationships change significantly. I've adjusted settings so that my played households don't auto-age up etc. This way whenever I feel like playing that household again, it's more or less the same as when I left it. Occasionally a significant townie will die while I'm playing another household, but I just move on regardless as part of the gameplay.
I've only stopped rotating because I didn't want to be forced to use corrective mods any more.
There is absolutely no reason why anything should change while we are playing a different household. By now There should be a 'leave household in statis' option.
I completed my uni sims and split them up between saves in their new homes but I am constantly re-saving when one household updates with something new. I just can't get my head around not playing them all in the same save! I might have to have a mini rotational game for them and play separate saves for totally unrelated sims.
@Flap do you know if that works properly now? I had read previously that the beloved trait only works for one sim per saved game.
@musteni @Brd709 @IndiiAna do you peeps all play vanilla? If so, how many households and how long are you away each time to manage to keep friends relationships?
Horrifying flashbacks to Sims 3. They lose data when you switch families now? I've never seen that before in Sims 4. In the past,
when I went back to a previous family after playing another they still had the same psychology.
-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.
Sometimes I upload my supersim, and download her into a new save and do something very different with her for a bit, like change her age. I treat it like a dream, delete the save file when I am done, and go back to my main game.
I play vanilla, over 30 households, rotating irregularly. I can be gone from one household for a very long time (several sim years). Like I mentioned losing friends has mostly happened on acquaintance level. Maybe it depends how many friends your sim has? Mine usually have just a few + relatives.
Updated with Werewolf Diaries (1)
I play with custom content and mods. I usually reset the parents of each household's age back to the start if they are near the end of the life stage if i'm not ready for them to age up yet. Or i play until all the kids in the household have aged up if their birthdays are close to each others.
I will mention that I am also a rotational player. I do have a Save dedicated to like 20 households I rotate between. It's occult/supernatural theme and I've kept it going since vampires GP. But I do enjoy the non-rotational game play with different Saves dedicated to different things as mentioned above.
To keep things fresh I make them friends in CAS, I never play them but I make sure they have full families, houses and jobs. I also made her parents and added a brother, I'll probably do something for him too but haven't been very inspired yet. Usually what ends up happening (and I hate that it's always the case) their house becomes too laggy because of all their collections and things so instead of moving them I just restart sadly. If I had aging on, it's like from starting a sim to when their kids are young adult. Back when I played legacies that's usually when I'd get "bored" but it wasn't boredom, it was lag and seeing how deformed the genetics made my kids look so I gave up on generational play.
Some other ideas, I had a barbie save back in ts3, basically playing barbie as a supersim maxing all careers. I made her a big pink mansion and would recolor everyone and everything in sunset valley in pink/turquoise/flashy pop colors. That's a good one for when you feel a little down. And then no really a rotation but playing all the premades. Aging off, pick a household and play them until you think they're "done", then move on to somebody else. I did that with Ned Whalen, made him climb up the tech guru career, then he decided to become a scientist, met his alien wife. Nowadays he's just the weird nerdy dad inviting people to barbecues. I moved on to other households, I'll never play them once they're done but it's nice that they are in the save, familiar faces and all that.
Can't guarantee 100% but I think it works now, all mentions to be broken are very dated (2017 and before).
I started a new rotational with the Infant update so time will tell me if Summer and Zoe (I guess they both have the FotW aspiration) will maintain the relationships they acquired
Or come to think of it NS might generate biological children for engaged couples too? I'm pretty sure I've seen some younger Charms and Ernests about...
-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.
Now, with Growing Together, I have had to compromise again and keep only the Sims that are integral to my story. I started this save with eight YAs with parents and a teen aged sibling still living with the parents of the YAs I was playing. The eight YAs were all the best of friends and did everything together as a group. Now their time is split between their friends and their respective parents and siblings. It wasn't long before I realized that it was going to be another save I would have to downsize, and I moved four of the eight YAs and their families to another save of their own. Maintaining close family ties is important to me because this is what I have been waiting for since 2017. But at the same time, I want my Sims to have special friends, too. My YAs have the family they were born into and a family they chose to have which is made up of special friends they are very close to. My vision is for their children to become friends and grow up together, hopefully becoming BFFs as their parents did. The siblings of my YAs have met through school, and I am hoping they will become friends as well. In order to accomplish this, I play with aging off because I am in no rush to make it all happen too soon. And I'd like to see some of the bugs and glitches eradicated before my YAs marry and have babies.
I am and always have been a rotational player. It isn't easy but I become bored playing the same Sims. I tried to stick with just one Sim many times, but I find it too easy, and their lives quickly become somewhat meaningless after a while. I do have two saves that are centered around one Sim that I play if I'm not in the mood to play a houseful of Sims. And I am grateful we have the option to play differently when we want to. It all comes down to have a choice. I like having choices.
My Families Via PlumTree App
So I guess rotational play is now no longer possible unless mods are used.
Since I just put 24 sims through uni (in batches of 8) I guess I'm going to have an awful lot of separate save games I will need.
Same with my ancestral save which isn't active at this moment. I would pop over to the other households just long enough to get the next baby born and/or aged up to be consistent with the historical timeline of my family. But, I much prefer playing my 6th great-grandparents over their parents' families.
http://www.getfreeebooks.com/star-trek-original-series-fan-fiction-trilogy/
All the sims err'day
In my main saved game I have over 30 households in my rotational and in every saved game I have tried to go with only one household and even wanting to recreate the rotation play I had in my Sims 3 gameplay, I fail. I think my attention span has lowered as I have gotten older.
@GalacticGal I can understand that as it is a pain for certain careers/studies if you are rotating, eg. I always ended up playing uni students for a whole term and actors until they completed both their audition and gig.
I've been playing a single household, got them started in jobs, got them through their wedding preparations and the ceremony, they are saving up to buy a vet surgery... but I want to move on and start progressing some of their friends lives too.
I started a new save for their friends but it's just... meh. The original sims are not yet married in this save, everything is back to how it was. I can't get my head around it, because I still want all their lives to be richly intertwined.
I can see the appeal of different saves if you're playing totally unrelated games but I don't think I can separate mine. And I keep trying to just stick to one household but it seems I'm not suited to that kind of gameplay lol. I get to a certain point and I'm just itching to see other sims develop.
I want to thank everyone for their contributions in this thread, but it seems like I'm a lost cause! Looks like I will have to reinstall MCCC and rotate away!!!!