Trying again to get into TS3, I think I'm starting to recognize some of the areas that keep it from being as much fun to me, and now that I can be more specific than just a general "I'm new to this, how do I make it fun?" question, hopefully I can actually articulate myself well enough for some helpful answers!

I think the biggest thing I'm recognizing as an issue so far is that none of the Sims outside my active household really feel worthwhile, almost to the point of it feeling like my Sim is literally alone in the world besides cursory interactions with shopkeeper and coworkers on just a base NPC level. Obviously for a 'life simulator' a big part of life should be social interaction, but I'm not seeing how that should really be incorporated into gameplay in a way that will not only be interesting and engaging in its own right, but will actually mesh with the build/buy design that I'm more comfortable with (once I have an idea of what kind of location I'm trying to make), as well as the wish/challenge completion that I at least know how to do, if not quite how to enjoy. Any thoughts?

EDIT: Just to kind of focus things on the Sims I'm already playing right now, the two households I've enjoyed most so far are a witch/alchemist who lives in Moonlight Falls with her cat who's working on saving up for an appropriately spooky victorian mansion, and a married adventurer couple in Isla Paradiso who live on a yacht and frequently visit Egypt. I'm certainly still eager to get more ideas, but especially if you've got thoughts on either of these households, that would be great!

Ho Zarathustra!!! Awww I get what you feel. Every sims game has some level of grinding -well just like real life-, but that can get very repetitive very quickly. I'll tell you what I do, and let's see if it gives you an idea.

Firstly, EA were a little lazy with premade sims, and didn't develop them that much. This ain't Pleasantview; whenever you load a premade household, sims tend to be on their lawn, don't have many relationships and have very generic wishes -this is a problem with the wish system, they're too strong and exaggerated. If a sim plants a vegetable, they will instantly have 4 or 5 wishes about gardening, even if you intend it to be just a simple hobby.

So, what do I do? Make my own worlds and sims with lots of relationships and family ties. That may be an extreme, but you can focus on 2 or three households with different composition and even economic status that are related: maybe two parents and the families of their offspring, or a group of friends with different families (or lack thereof...).

The variety in relationships will give you more varied wishes and things to do, and expand organically the social aspect: maybe two sims from different families are a couple and want to spend time together, or enemies and want to fight each time they met across the street...

If the world is big, you can spread out your played sims and give them a reason to travel to different parts of the city, preferably on foot or bycicle, so you can be in different ambients and watch what the neighbours are up to. And that gives a whole picture of different sims with diverse lifes, which is to me the magic of Sims 3.

If you don't want Story Progression messing with the plan you have with your sims (even if you turn it off, it will break havoc), you can download Awesomemod at MATY and give them the "Chosen one" trait, which deactivates SP entirely for them.

I feel like this is probably the most promising, since with TS1 and especially with TS2, the times I had the most fun with gameplay was once I had a large enough population that *I* knew who neighbors and passers-by were... "oh, there goes the local mad scientist, oh there's the kid that's always getting into trouble"... that sort of thing. Trouble is, it's hard to start that system since it really does need a pretty large population to begin with. Add on to that the mess that Story Progression seems to be if you're ever really playing more than one household in a neighborhood, and it becomes pretty difficult to get over that initial hurdle.

Just about the first thing you need to do to play TS3, is visit Nraas, and grab some mods. Their Story Progression is far better than EA's, and there are a lot more, like Master Controller and Traveler, which fixed EA's bbusted system.

After that, I enjoy Dexter The Bear, and will take my Harley Quinn or killing sprees from time to time. You know... things you just shouldn't do in real life!

The thing to keep in mind about TS3 in comparison to the other Sims games is that its much more of an open world sandbox than the isolated per-lot style the others have. That means by its nature its easy to get overwhelmed if you don't really set any particular goals for a household while playing.

I share ed95's sentiment about filling out a world with your own personal sims and storylines, but even for a particular household at a time - what helps get the creative juices flowing for me personally is going the slow burn route. That means you essentially build up your save as you go along instead of trying to go all in with a rigid plan for what's going to happen. What I often like to do is take a random sim the game spews out, give them a makeover in CAS, and work them into whatever I'm planning for that particular save/world. It helps keep things fresh and organic.

And in my personal opinion, while it may not be for everyone, I find that Story Progression is a good feature in and of itself. NRaas handles it much better, but even EA's isn't all that terrible once the jank is ironed out through fixes/mods. Though I've never really been one to want complete control over every aspect of my sim's lives anyway, I like some uncertainty which I also feel like it helps keep things from feeling monotonous.

I, too, agree with ed95. The more interesting and connected the other sims in town are, the more interesting it gets, even without Story Progression (and that includes those dreaded townies and NPCs - create them yourself and release them as homeless sims in the world so they take up all those spots). And of course if it's a nicely made world with interesting community lots that have lots of things to do. It doesn't need such a large population initially, here some "lore" or "story" driven approach might help, like building up the town or a survivor/finding yourself in a new or unexpected place background.

As a contrary opinion, I like premades, and a lot of my recent gameplay has been taking over a premade household. Many of them have good backstories to start with. My current favorite game is the Riffin household, which is a newly aged-up YA looking after his two younger siblings after their parents die in a fire (with gravestones on the lot).

I'm very invested in having a fleshed out town, and EA Story Progression just doesn't do jack with inactives. I use NRaas StoryProgression, though not all the modules, and I set the speed on Slow. Even running normal lifespan, I think NRaas's normal speed is much too fast. Half the town will be married before you have a chance to start your active sim dating. If you use some of the Personalities modules, you can introduce some more complicated interpersonal relationships amongst inactives, though I'd set the speed of those to slow AT LEAST and maybe ultra-slow (or whatever the snail pace is called). When I ran with the supernatural personalities, inactives were changing supernatural type (recruited, then cured, etc) incredibly fast.

I think all sims should have their first point of Charisma as fast as possible because it's just impossible to maintain relationships outside the household without it, though it occurs to me that there might be a mod to increase the default relationship gain for someone without Charisma. When you have relationships outside the household, however, they will call and invite you to parties. This is somewhat bugged, but I've found that inactive parties work if you go to the inactive sim's house as soon as you get the invitation as opposed to when the party actually starts. You also get a pretty absurd number of calls for dates. That can be helped by deleting your online dating profile, which I believe every adult sim has by default. My sims without profiles get some dating calls, but fewer and from people they actually know.

I've found that keeping my household connected with relationships outside the household works better with a somewhat longer lifespan by default. It gives you a more natural amount of time to visit and interact with these inactive sims.

I also run with Jobs Overhaul and Twinsimming's Layoff mod, plus a few other mods to make progression not so automatic. I'm not sure if you consider those to be grindy. The Riffins started out dirt poor, and it's been difficult for them to get ahead, which is exactly the challenge I'm going for.

Some wishes are good for character development and some aren't. I find the relationship wishes are pretty good (e.g. hang out with, chat with, ask on date, kiss, move in with, etc.). The early wishes to develop skills are pretty annoying because they're so predictable, so I ignore them. Also, TS3's wishes are truly miserable to mod, so there are very few mods that add gameplay that include wishes. You have to use some other way to decide your sim will pursue those activities.

It's a pretty open-ended question, so one could write forever about how to make the game interesting.