I oftentimes will set out to do a big challenge like the legacy challenge, or even just have a great idea for a household, then in a few days get bored of them and want to move on. How do you guys keep your households interesting enough to not move on from them?
Also, when you guys are wanting to play the sims but uninspired for what to make or how to play, what do you usually turn to for inspiration?
I find that I always end up watching let's plays, being interested in a particular storyline from it, then pursue it and start feeling guilty for just copying
so what do you guys do?
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But it really depends on what you like to do, whether you build or not, whether you have aging on or off etc.
I also try and encourage myself to incorporate things in to my game play that I otherwise wouldn't have, like certain aspirations, trying to fulfil whims to see where that takes me.
Writing the story of my legacy helps too as as soon as one chapter is done I want to then start the next one and see what else happens in my characters' lives
I also like wandering the hills.
All the sims err'day
...and if there is a sale going on or I'm doing okay financially, I will treat myself to a new pack! Okay...that's kind of cheating because I'm basically buying myself out of boredom, but it works!
For instance, I just expanded (again) one of the first families that I created. This time I made all of the parents of the married couples because I wanted my family trees to show how all the children, cousins, etc., were related to each other and I wanted the kids to have grandparents. The back story for one set of parents is that they moved to Sulani after their daughters went to college. In Sulani, they became conservationists and had a twin boy and girl. I’m starting their story with the parents as elders and the twins as homeschooled teens. The twins will live a carefree island life, which will differ greatly from the structured life their older sisters had as members of high society and debutantes of Willow Creek. I also created Sulani families with teens so the twins will have their circle of friends.
Why not to have your sim divorce and let the kids visit the other parent on weekends via manage households?
2. Make places that the game doesn't have a setup for. Be creative. Like make a teen center or after-school center for kids and have the group go there, or just set it so it's off limits to everyone but the group and maybe an "employee" like the cool kids counselor or something. If you have more teens than will fit in a group, you can make 2 teen groups and give them both access. Or make offices for your adults to go work at. You can even set up cubicles with half walls. I guarantee you that if you bring a group of people to a place full of computers, they will all immediately "get to work," haha. Or at least it will look like they're working while they play games or whatever. Have a manager's office that is locked to everyone but the manager. It's especially fun to have an office in a highrise because it makes for some great screenshots. You can also do this with residential lots. Right now, I'm playing a Victorian era game and I have a factory where everyone works (using woodworking tables), but it's actually a residence, so they also all sleep there in dorm-style rooms. Use your imagination to set up different venues and use groups and door locks to control it.
3. Set up entire worlds based on a theme. Delete all the premade sims and any buildings that don't match your theme. You can play an era, like the 70s, or the 1800s, or even the future. It's challenging but also fun to try to find all the right cc and to populate your world with the right types of buildings, clutter, people, hairstyles, etc. Just make sure you don't try to build the entire world first before playing any sims because it will take forever. Do it in stages and build a little more on with each generation.
4. Use reward trait cheats and also additional traits that you can download. The sims' personalities are lacking, so I pad them out as much as I can to make things more realistic and choose reward traits that I think would fit their personality.
5. Don't make your sims perfect. If every sim is beautiful and nice, that gets boring. For personality, go to one of the sites that let you randomly role personality traits and then just put in whatever you rolled. Or pick your own traits but always do 2 positive and 1 negative. For looks, I like to generate 2 random sims, then use them to create a teen child (so I can see what he/she will look like), then delete the random sims and change the age of the teen to whatever I need. While I'm randomly generating the teen, I stop at the one who looks the most realistic, rather than the one who looks the most beautiful (unless I happen to roll a raving beauty or something, which is rare).
On EA forum Stories and Legacies board and on QueenOfMyshuno.tumblr.com
I have a legacy in Sims 3. When I get bored of it, I take a break from it for a few days or weeks and play with another family in either 3 or 4. Sometimes, I'll take a break from the game entirely.
Sometimes, I like trying to reach a certain goal, like getting to the top of a career or achieving a certain lifetime wish.
On EA forum Stories and Legacies board and on QueenOfMyshuno.tumblr.com
Family Tree
Playing Mod & CC Free
Allowing myself to be weird and accepting my short attention span keeps it exciting for me everyday. 😁
I do this as well! Right now, I have 5 saves that I play rotationally. In my main save, I’m playing about 30 different households rotationally. I play each family for about a sim week and then switch families. When I’m bored in my main save, I switch over to one of my other saves which include different themed families I play on rotation and one save that is only for building and play testing my builds (for when I’m just in a building/world development mood).
Also, I usually don’t play challenges because I don’t like following the rules, but instead set my own long term story goals for my sims. For example, with my Caliente family my first goal in story was to have Katrina madly in love with Don and naive to the fact that he is only after her money and is cheating on her with both daughters. I wanted her to get engaged to him and then catch him cheating on her with Nina, kicking them both out. It was so much fun to play through that (I would share photos of it if I wasn’t still in new member status) and then when that was finished I started on my next round of story/drama goals for each character (Katrina, Nina, Dina, don, etc.). When I started getting bored in the down time of playing them through before I was ready to complete/start the next story arc, I switched over to a different save and worked on my stories there. Playing this way makes me feel like I’m a writer on day time dramas or soap operas lol and I can come back to each story when I’m ready to so I never feel stuck or disengaged.
I also have several "sometimes" games with different types of characters, and I love to build, as well !
Playing generations is the best thing for me. I have one main household and every generation is something new. New characters, new worlds, sims and features to explore and if I desire to play with a certain story I have in mind that does not fit into the life's of my generation households, I am allowed to create this desired sim (or household) and add it to my rotational play. If I ever feel I am done with them, I can cancel them and just let them be as long as I keep playing with my generation household. Love it!
I've done it a few years back, and it was fun.