is it just me, but I find it hard to raise a family, take care of any pets, own a business and grow a decent size garden for fresh fruits and veggies.

anyone else think so?

Without cheat? Yup. Screaming baby, dog peeing on the floor, carpool horn honking, veggie rotting, etc. It's total chaos but I love it, except for the baby that never stops crying....

You forgot sending the kids to college...

I don't think I could play this game without cheats anymore. I have been playing Seasons for two days now and I have had to use the maxMotives cheats loads of times to be able to cope. Hopefully it won't take them too long to get a compatible insimenator out or I may just go crazy.

Its my own fault though, I see you can grow veg and I immediatly think ooooh I can open a green grocers! Next thing I have a garden full of crops that all need looking after.

my poor sims hardly ever go out anywhere nowadays and when the phone goes or they get a visitor its very rarely answered.

How many farmers you know who also have good careers and big business and lots of children with good grades and pets? I think that it has pretty realistic difficulty level..

I've gotten to the point where I have to choose which expansion a Sim/Family are going to go for, because I can't handle all of them! I always get them a pet or a business or now a garden and then have to abandon it when it gets to be too much.

There's just SO MUCH to do with this game now! And I'm still trying to figure out how to join the secret society and how to become a vampire.....

Lol - I gave up on secret societies ages ago and used a chat to join one. I actually didn't know they exhisted for a good few months after getting university and I actually read all the little booklets and realised there was loads of stuff I didn't know about.

Thats a good idea about choosing which expansion packs you are going to use for each family. I may have to adopt that idea.

I dont think it would be soo bad if you didnt have to tend to the garden by pulling weeds every time you turn around.

Aaaaaamen.

I find if I try to "do it all" with a family it becomes so demanding it takes the fun out of it. Instead of having a single sim be the ace of all suits, I too give them one area to specialize in. I mean, in reality if we tried to do all of that we'd all die far too young. Now if only I could bring myself to be mean to the little pixel objects of my affections. I'd love to see the spontanious combustion some are talking about, or even the frozen sims toppled over outside in winter. But I just can't seem to bring myself to it.

Two -words - Merola's painting. I max out Social and Fun with it, raise aspiration if needed (rarely though) and add days to age stages. That is enough to cope even with Seasons, I do try to limit the cheating.

Heck i cant even remeber the last time ive played the game with cheats, fun to try and earn it all :einstein :Pimp:, though it does get tough at times i love how theres so much to do now!

I cannot play without cheats... I have major ocds, I can't have my sims poor even the ones supposed be poort still have too much, i can't have them age normally, everyone has to age at the same time as the neighbors of the same age, i send friend townies to college to satisfy wants, i use insim like... every 2 minutes... really upset it messes with Seasons, because I was all options... and inteen... forget it... i have two pregnant teens, and i have to delete inteen because it messes with the game too... i have so many hacks, and cc, my game is just... a mess... i can't imagine playing without hacks and cc though!

I should try 1 lot sometime... see how i manage.

but i have ofb and don't ever have businesses... i just got it for the rest...

I do the same as FeNerd I don't use all expansion packs at once, like they're all in the game but most of the time run in as a background with all options but it's not like I play uni all the time, go on dates downtown and have tons of vampires all the time, I don't go crazy with pets, only some families have them and they don't have jobs or I don't breed them much, and seasons well... not everybody's gonna be a farmer!!!! I mostly just got it for the weather not really the gardening... well I do garden in some lots, but I take it easy and I do cheat, yes.

you can use the OBJ version of In sim. It does not cause problems with seasons. You have to actually buy the cheat objects under electronics, but that is not to hard to get use to. This is what I am doing with no problems.

I don't cheat, but I don't try to do it all either. I usually play with just one sim because that way I can concetrate on fufilling his wants and actually keep the house clean and maybe run a business OR a garden at the same time. That is just impossible for me to do with even a family of four. That's when things get messy, even with outside help like a maid. Like someone said earlier in the thread, we can't do it all in real life, why do we expect our sims too? LOL!

Dream

Doing everything is definitely harder now that there's so much to do. I never use mood cheats or anything, and I can play a family of 6 with a couple pets, businesses (yes more than one), kids getting multiple scholarships to college, gardens, fishing, etc etc. I'm getting better at it, that's for sure

I usually can't handle more than four sims, pets included. I won't get my family a pet until all the kids grow up from being toddlers. For the most part, I have to decide between pets or kids, lol.

One of my sims is a single parent and has an at-home business. It's hectic to deal with the business, take care of her kids and still make sure my little sim doesn't pass out from exhaustion by 7pm, lol.

With all the expansion packs installed, I'm playing a lot more families at once so I can do everything, but not all at once. One family has the kids and the garden, one family has the dogs and owns a community lot, then there's the single mom with the at-home business and I also have a vampire sim that just parties all the time.

I started out with the giving them each a different focus. I had my woman go to work, since I work in a law firm, and got her on the Law career track. I had my guy stay at home and work on the garden. He now has a gold gardening badge. Then, I remembered to look at their LTW, and darn it! His LTW is to reach the top of the education career track, and hers is to raise 20 puppies or kittens. DOH! Eventually, I'll switch their roles once I get the friggin wishing well with his gold gardening badge.

Well, I don't think they actually expect every household to incorporate every aspect of every ep. It's nice to have a little diversity. I think if every family had pets and their own business and a garden, those features would get old.

I like to spread it around. Only a few of my Sims own businesses, about the same own pets and I'll probably have just a few families have gardens (mostly elderly couples). I can probably only think of one family that both owns a pet and a business.

I think Seasons has actually made things easier. If you start in summer, you can make friends in record time, then in autumn build up all your skills (if you wear a thinking cap, ask for a lesson on one of the career rewards in the autumn, you can max out a skill before your motives deplete), winter's a good time to catch up with extended family like cousins, nieces and nephews and spring though is supposed to be for love but works pretty much the same as summer in making it easier to make friends.

It's a nightmare... if you choose to try it all. Why not just cut out a couple of the packs from each family? Not everyone in my town has pets for example.

Springtime is AWESOME for Romance sims! And yeah, I really love how Seasons makes some things easier to do now. It was a great idea on the part of the programmers.

Dream

I had a baby in the house and every time he cried, i let one of the other sims hold him and play with him. After that it took a few hours to get him crying again.

well said! and I 2nd that!

I try so hard not to cheat, but the more time I spend playing and checking out message boards with new mods and hacks, I get so tempted!

I recently discovered maxmotives....bad news.... It makes things too easy sometimes! I have to remind myself what the point of the game is so I don't just cheat through it and then they're dead and that's it. Booooring!

I try to remember that it's supposed to be REAL life. And that means kids ARE exhausting, promotions at work take a LOT of dedication, running a business is not easy/for everyone, and a beautiful garden takes lots of elbow grease.

Too often I find myself blowing through the game and not even noticing my Sims' nuances and personalities...how sad!

Gardening with a job, a teen and a dog to look after was hard for my sim yesterday. Guess they just cant have it all, or cheats and hacks will solve some of if.