Just a curious question here. When you all play a neighborhood what piques your interest the most, or what gets you wanting to play that hood?


For me I'm obsessed with the tiny details. Whether those details are within the storyline, Sim naming schemes, or just simple things like light switches on lots. A neighborhood with tiny details feels more complete to me.

When I'm playing Tinsel Town (and yes, I'm really missing it, badly) I am most interested in what those pixel critters are up to. Sometimes the stories play themselves. The little personality details and interactions are my main interest.

I don't know if I can speak to this because I only really ever played 1 (2 if you count the one I had before my sister erased it) but the thing they both had in common was they were custom ones I started and put my own characters into and then I started building a hood that way. It's kept my interest since 2007 so, maybe it's just this neverending story of a bunch of little stories and pixel lives, trying to do good by them and dodging and adapting to curveballs they throw via ROS, ACR, or other unplanned activity. I don't have an interest in playing other hoods but I do like to see what others are doing because we all have unique gameplay ideas and set ups.

Honestly, I love creating my own stories and building my own hoods from scratch. I pretty much never play maxis' or other people's neighborhoods, as well-made and interesting as they are. I love using other people's buildings and sc4 maps, but neighborhoods as a whole, never. The exception is if it's an empty hood with no sims.

I think what interests me the most is the sims' roles and the connections they have with other people in the neighborhood.

I actually do play other's neighborhoods. I like seeing what kind of stories and ideas other people have come up with. Sometimes I'll use them as inspiration in my own game.

...And I do admit sometimes I do enjoy creating my own Sims in these neighborhoods and seeing how the story unfolds and what drama I can create.

I was going to comment on that the other day, the more time you spend not playing life mode and just building, the more you disconnect from what makes the game fun. That's why my answer would be to play a lot of custom neighborhoods, it's what makes you realize what's interesting. And sometimes also let yourself go and let things flow.

I went back into Thalia (my first real personal neighborhood) and I found the interconnections between the families is fun-and figuring out the next chapters of the story is also my driving motivation.

I think what makes neighborhoods most interesting and fun to play is looking into the Sims themselves... which neighbors do they like and which ones do they hate? What's the drama? What are the ties between different people? What are their secrets? As a kid I especially liked to go to different premade families and just read through their memories from oldest to newest, eager to put together my interpretation of what roles these characters played in the narrative, a narrative that I have control over! And now as an adult I do the same thing. It's like being in charge of my own soap opera.

It's, unfortunately, why Desiderata Valley and Bluewater Village in particular were, for a while, kind of boring, to me, because where's the drama? The flavor? However over the years I've come to enjoy the peaceful vibes of either 'hood, and Desiderata in particular has a real fun cast of characters even if it's not filled to the brim with mystery and drama the way, say, Pleasantview is.