Sometimes I wish I hadn't discovered cheats...

But then theres the reasons you do.

this is me all over.. i go on and say i wont use the cheats but within 5 minutes ive given my sims tons of money via motherlode!!

when i get bored i leave my game alone for a while - about 3 months :/ and then go back to it and it makes the game really enjoyable and i become addicted to it for ages after..

I'm a sucker for knight-in-shining-armor-type stories...so I used a cheat to make this one Sim super-rich, and he took in Brandi and her bunch...then married her. Now she has baby #4 on the way.

If you have a single sim or an old sim and you get bored with playing them only, I've found a way to make it more exciting. I don't have apartment life but I build multi room apartment like structures (duplexes, trailer parks) and move in the singles, or single old people so that they have people to interact with. The only challenging part is keeping them in their own spaces, but if you have equal appliances, entertainment objects, and a good eyes--you can keep them out of each other's rooms. It gets them played too so they don't sit on their own lots and get minimal playtime because its boring.

[QUOTE=Annababy]
My 3rd hood is my legacy challenge hood, except I have my own set of rules, in that every day that passes represents one year, so the founder started out in 1800. The rules for what items I can use on the lot, who can have what kinds of jobs and when, etc. are rigorously adhered to depending on the year. For example, women couldn't have real jobs for a long time, and then were limited in how far they could promote, which I'm keeping to. Gay sims have to keep it secret--if they are found out, they lose their chance to be heirs (until 1975, according to my rules). Makes it tough. It's 1942 right now, and my heir (males only, of course, until 1960) had to quit his job as a detective to join the military, which he'll have to stay in for the next few 'years.' Anyway, this challenge is especially fun because families don't get filthy rich within a generation or two--takes longer, especially for the early generations who only farmed--, it makes heavy use of custom content to redecorate every few years to keep up with the styles of the time period, same with clothing.
[QUOTE]

That sounds really cool! I think I am going to steal this idea!!

The BEST way to enjoy the game is to NOT play the game. I go around sites hunting for custom content that would suit the Sims I'm thinking of but am probably never going to use. Then, when I run out of things to download, I enter my game and start trying to use everything I can.
Everything I hate goes to the trash.
It's a never ending cycle, but finding custom content is actually, for me, a thousand times more fun than actually playing the game because I get all excited at how awesome the content is.

Hey you are my mam. I have it all over in my victorian themed hood. A girl from large and I mean LARGE family ( 8 and more kids ) with stay at home mother falls in love with this rich guy from the big house on the hillv

In one of my hoods, I have I sim who I pretend is a celebrity. She has to have a good reputation, which she gets by greeting and talking to sims on community lots. She has to host parties and outings frequently (or at least to the extent that she is able to) and has to support some community lots by going and talking to visitors there. She was the former Diva, so she had a lot of friends to begin with. Whenever she supports a community lot, I use familyfunds to add a lot of money to her funds, which I pretend the company pays her for her support.
She is really fun to play, but right now now she is taking a break to be with her newborn twins.

I am the same. I find it so bizarre, but it is very fun!

Yeah, I was bored of sims 2 and I didn't play it for a month, i think, and after that it was so exciting to play with really normal families with mom, dad and two children. :D
And, with the cheats it's the same for me. I discovered that I cannot survive without cheats.

I thought it might be fun to try to start one legacy with only 1000 simoleons and crappy house. That's right, 1000 simoleons. To make it bit more harder, I'll stick only on the slacker career which is the lowest paying job.

EDIT: I found it almost impossible, cheapest lot costs 900 simoleons. I'll start with 3000 simoleons then

Even though i don't actually participate in the challenges they do spawn some good ideas for the game.

My current thing to keep the game interesting is to have various owned community lots and then teleport in as many playable sims as my computer can handle to, say, a nightclub, and then just watch them all interact. I might make them all selectable but I usually just let them do their own thing, and it's fun to see what choices they make. At my custom nightclub, I created four hot musician characters JUST for performing at the club - they haven't even got a home, still in the sim bin, but I edited them on SimPE to max out their creativity points. So I've got a ready-made music group to entertain customers.

I often do the same with parties, just invite over as many sims as I want, put the sim who threw the party on "Socialise friends" macro, and then just leave them to it! It usually gets some hilarious results.

I do this because normally I like to be the director of everything that goes on in my Sims lives, including their choice of partner, but sometimes I think.. WTH, let THEM decide what they want to do for a change.

I've decided to create a head vampire, and when im playing through my generations I might pick someone to become part of her covern, until I have a bunch of unruly vampires from different generations causing trouble throughout the neighbourhood Its not the main thing I focus on, I have lots of other stories going on trying to keep things interesting, some things posted in this thread have been really useful.

I looked at this page and then played The Sims 2, What i normally do on the Sims 2 is make BIG million dollar homes that take hours or make a family that take hours because i am picky and move them into a lot and make them a house for there looks but never play the family when house was done because after about 2 hours of making a family or a house i got bored and quit the game... But from reading this the small family why not make a big family thing so i went on made a couple John and Emma Murphy and i move them into a EA made home and edited a little to my touch and they had a baby and wow i was playing for about 6 hours today my first time having a baby on the game and it was fun... I see now there is more to this game then just building a house and that having a family is fun!

i get really obsessive on keeping my neighbourhood perfect, but then i realized that the whole point of the sims is to be totally creative and not be stressed about keeping the game civilized. I realize now that if all i do is make average american families, what fun am i going to have ? Go crazy with your neighbourhood. Make a whole new neighbourhood for kooks. Just have fun with it.

It's weird cos I go through phases of playing intensely, then I won't play for about a week and will just build my own stuff and arrange neighbourhoods, then I might switch to downloading custom content and trying it all out and making notes on stuff I like/dislike. And sometimes I wake up with tons of ideas for stories in my head and that's when I KNOW I have to either get a pen out and organise my ideas or go and do something completely different instead cos I know it's taking over my life! lol

What seems to have taken up 80% of my simming time this last week is creating a brand new downtown hood in the urban city style and gathering various custom lots and content as well as making my own stuff. It makes a change from all the plush tropical apartments I have in my other hood and my other country/nature-themed hood. I live in London anyway so my hood is beginning to look like a place called Wapping which is really bohemian and full of warehouses, etc.

My suggestion;

Don't play hoods like Maxis wants you to!
Have Tybalt and Mercutio date (Lol), resurrect some sims, have Daniel Pleasant break up with the maid and stay with his wife!
MiX iT uP bAbY!

I've seen too many people say that the games get boring once you play through all the stories. >.>

Pleasantview in my game has really gotten interesting as of late. All of the Maxis-made families have new kids, new friends, enemies, etc.
I just cannot wait until my new generation takes over :D

I deleting all maxis default neighborhoods and create a new one, that is challenge me, i create custom neighborhood and build over 20 business community lots and build my empire where i can yowling, sometime i used debug mode but never used money cheat.

I am totally new to MTS2 and i need HELP badly. All i want to get is a few custom hair, skin and clothes and hell if anyone knows of one a program that lets me make my own sims, like their skins, clothes and everything!I love playing this game but I don't have the money to buy all the stuff packs, besides you use them once then they start collecting dust! I prefer custom done stuff anyway, it's original and has a real history behind it!

All i want is a program that i can use and create my own sim skins and etc, i save as many of the ones online as i can but no has unlimited download usage these days..right? If someone could send me a link with the program on the other side or give me a way to get the program I'd be really grateful and would flutter away and never bug you again! , please help...

@CandleHeart
Your Sims 2 Body Shop not working?
you can create everything with Simpe but very risky.

With your base game, you should've gotten a program called "Sims 2 Body Shop" which installed with it. Body Shop is the first stop to extracting files in order to start creating your own custom content.

If you're planning on doing recolours of existing clothes/hairstyles/etc., you'll want a decent graphics-editing program (I use Photoshop, but I hear Gimp is also good - and free). If you're planning on creating whole new outfits/hairstyles/etc., then you'll need a 3D editing program (and I warn you from experience, this is NOT for the faint of heart.)

The tutorials on creating recolours, etc. can all be found under Create -> Sims 2 -> Tutorials. I strongly recommend reading through at least one before even attempting your first project.

This is me. I need to get crazy.

Recently, I discovered the joy of huge extended families. Move siblings and their spouses into the same house and make babies- extra points if their spouses are siblings, too. Might want to have a bigger household mod. Move in the parents and have fun! Crazy, chaotic fun.
Turn of aging and build their wealth and relationships. Elixir of life the parents so they can live forever!

Randomizing aspiration can help. (Sorry if this has been said already) I used it in Pleasantview one time, everyone got different first and second aspirations than before and makeovers according to them. Also, for me atleast, playing The Sims 1 helps