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.

Hey sorry before i even start...but
 

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

I've been playing the legacy challenge for actual points. It's kind of fun--I'm working on one kid who's supposed to get all his skills maxed by the time he turns teenager (among other things), and somewhere along the line I'm going to get an alien-zombie-vampire-plantsim-witch. And getting two social bunnies to have romantic interactions with each other should be an interesting trick! It's not a hard challenge by any means, but there are plenty of things to do.

I've always wanted to play a legacy challenge but I'm not very good at timelines and such, or keeping things in period. So I go way back, before even medieval times, to dawn of man scenarios, or Native Sims. They fish, since I have Seasons and there is no hunt option, and eventually learn to cultivate food. I use inTeen to allow adult/teen romance, and have the special wedding arch to allow multiple wives, or, if I wanted, husbands. That's good for other game scenarios, too of course. I always make sure lot jealousy is turned off in such cases; I don't want my sims hating each other.

Too bad sims don't get jealous on a case by case basis-either they do or they don't.

This is really great! I want a alien-zombie-vampire-plantsim-witch now (I wonder what it looks like?)

Whenever I get bored with my game, I just come to this site and get inspiration by looking at houses others have built or reading what others might be doing with their sims in order to get a few ideas on what to do with mine. It's really helpful. Especially when I get into a house-building mood.

I feel bad for destroying my sims lives with affiars and unplanned deaths, which makes it very boring to play. So I let them have a full life of prefect childhood, ace uni and reach the top of there career, and then things can get interesting.

The thing is:i tryed the most of this(i'm playing the sims for 7 years,including sims 1 and 3)

When I get really bored, I make completely random sims just for fun and never play them. I just take pictures of them and that's it. I have dozens of almost-empty lots with random sims in them in a completely useless neighborhood. Actually, I haven't actually led Sims' lives at all for about a month.

I switch up building and playing, and hoods. One day I'll build some more residences in my Pleasantview legacy and play a few families, another day I'll switch to my custom hood and do the same. I'll start challenges and leave them for another day. It keeps it from becoming the same old thing.

When I had the sims 2 installed, I had so much fun even without having any other expansion pack, ofcourse then the disc broke so I got double deluxe and had even more fun. I kept my game interesting because I always came up with new storylines for my characters and sims, got them new clothing,hairstyles and other downloads. Just created love triangles and various other storylines like that to follow. Miss my sims so much unfortunately my computer would die if I put it back on.

For some reason I decided Strangetown needed to be revamped into something out of the sixties and seventies, so I have been rebuilding everything to look like midcentury modern and bungalow type houses and community lots. I'm abotu halfway done with the neighborhood and it's starting to look kind of cool.

I do a lot of the baby challenges(like raising as many kids as possible) which is odd for me since I hate dealing with toddlers(oh how this mirrors my real life). I make a very attractive couple in CAS, have them make a boatload of kids and then repopulate the neighborhood with the new sims. they created.

In my case, I've got a lot of things to do.

I put anything directly in my download folder, it include global object mods so my game is unstable so since the begin of the year I classify all the custom content.

8550 files done and 8793 files left, I did about the half of them.
I removed old ugly stuff, keep on downloading new stuff and customize some custom content.

After that, I will merge the different generations of sims into the same totally customize neighborhood.
I've got 267 sims that I want to import with their personality and their relationship.
I'm more a SimCity player then I want to control the city from the mayor to the citizens and manage the whole neighborhood.

I spent too much time to search good stuff, to customize sims, houses and neighborhoods.
Because of that, I can't play to The Sims 3 then reset all my work and restart the scavenger hunt.

I have a plantsim-alien-zombie-werewolf and it looks like the last thing that they turned into (Plantsim)

I got AnyGameStarter and went back to playing just Double Deluxe with no CC except critical fixes. It was so fun not having to worry about how this hack works or the way this makeup should be used. I made the fugliest sims and they fit in with everyone else. It's loads of fun.

Does anyone else remember the "newness" of getting a new EP? I remember getting Seasons and BV (in that order) and being absolutely stunned. I loved trying out the new features without knowing what would happen if I answered the Ninja's questions, or if I put my sim out in a thunderstorm (well, I kind of knew what would happen then.) I almost wish they'd come out with a new EP, even though it would destroy all my hacks.

There is nothing like a brand new hood to get the imagination going. I love doing stuff I haven't done before, but this is my second custom hood. But, this custom hood is Pleasantview with a clean template so I don't have a bunch of unwanted townies roaming about, but have all the main playable families. I will make a few dozen customized townies to add to the population, but I am planning to choose only two of the families/houses to play.

Also, this is the first time I've ever played the Pleasantview neighborhood. I am also introducing aliens immediately to the hood. Unlike before when I didn't have any aliens at all or added aliens after playing my other hood for a long time.

i just make a giant production where the neighborhoods start a war or something.

Superglitch that sounds absolutely hysterical....I can just see the entire neighborhood of Pleasantview storming Strangetown with torches and pitchforks! lol

I just started a custom neighborhood where different areas of the neighborhood are based on different time periods...one area is Victorian, one area is WWII, one area is 1950s, one area is medieval. I'm still building it so I haven't started playing it yet, but I'm having a blast building it. My last custom hood was patterned after old horror movies. I had alot of supernatural sims...Christopher Lee as Dracula...Vincent Price (my favorite old movie actor)...Zombies and Werewolves...I spent alot of time in CAS creating them, but with the custom content, they are just perfect (of course the zombies and werewolves didn't come from CAS! )! It took me almost a year to finish that neighborhood. I even have the Neighborhood Evil Witch living in a Gingerbread house.

I sometime make opposites of the premade families, just to get ideas whilst not repeating things I've played. I remade the Pleasants (but all with different names), and made Daniel a hardworking family man, and Mary-Sue a lazy, unemployed romance sim who flirts with everyone but has never actually had a full-on affair. The twin teen girls are best friends and both knowledge sims who spend all their time studying. None have got friends or boyfriends.

Then I recreated the Curious-opposites. Three sisters who wanted very normal lives. I think 2 were wealth sims and one was popularity. They wanted a traditional house and good standard jobs, and only one settled down and had a child.

Then I thought about Veronaville, and made 2 families whose parents were best friends with each other. They were trying to influence their teenage children to get together to keep the families close, but the teens hated each other, and it was driving the families apart.
It's quite interesting to do this, it generates storylines with backstories and personalities. I did it for every family in Pleasantview, and nearly all from Strangetown.

Sometimes I get bored doing the same thing, whether it's building a new hood, making new families or playing existing families. I have an dark alter ego in my pleasantview hood that I sort of live vicariously through when I get bored...or when I'm really torqued about something going on in my life. She's okay with doing things I would never do.

The asylum challenge sounds so cool I think i might try that :D

I am not really into chalenges but I would love to have someone to play like thisthe game...
Two persons creates 8 sims both share the same hood(custon or own creation). the 8 sims (4 women and 4 men) the thing is to see how thos sims will develop in eachother game. A LJ to keep weekly infos of the events...It is not a multiplaeyr. But is interresthing to know how diferent or similar my sim lives in other hands!!!
Better would be if the person has the same Eps as I do!

The thing that mostly gets me bored of the sims is the music... ive heard them all then i go on to playing The Sims on the console (The Sims Bustin out, The Sims 2, Urbz,The Sims 2 Pets) just to hear that music. then i comeback to TS2 refreshed but that quickly goes away. not to mention i solved that problem now because i found a site with some simlish versions of the songs that are featured on some of the console versions.

I solved the music problem by putting on my headphones and turning on my mp3 player...it's not simlish, but it's music that I love...and it's so cute watching my sim couple slow dance to Augustana's Sweet and Low.

Just to break out of my usual play style, I adopted the "random sim" challenge, altered a randomizing program from MATY and created an entire new hood full of families using the randomizing program with all the parameters for a family and sim. Using this has turned sims into rather interesting personalities, and not as "cookie-cutter" personalities as the premades.
It really has turned out to be such fun that I can just sit back and enjoy watching them-for instance, I have a firefighter who is afraid of fire and various ladies chasing older men, and sometimes catching them, a hippie who grows pot in his side yard and who had the want to apply for membership in the gardening club-and was accepted!
To do the random names, I used the Census Bureaus' most popular male/female names and surnames. This has the effect of making the sims almost "human". I also used the traits from the game, as well as all the various little things that go into making a CAS family, such as the astrological signs, etc.
Lots of work, but worth it to break the monotony. One never knows what will happen in a neighborhood with 10 randomized families and personalities!
I don't give them their lifetime wants, either. I wrote that into the program so that they get a job that might not fit into their lifestyle, but it has to work for them. The teens will get random aspirations, and they get jobs that are not necessarily to their liking either.

I made my sim a serial killer!
Locking up a bunch of passerbys and sitting in a chair with popcorn in your hand and 3D glasses on is amusing as hell xD

I live in Avalon (I guess you could say the real one, Somerset England), it’s the coolest town on the planet. This town is full to bursting point with hippies, artists, musicians, druids, witches, poets, dancers, drummers, healers, writers, photographers, radicals in everything modern…real Romany gypsies, potters, wood carvers, every type of religion, storey tellers… I could go on but you get the idea. I am in the process of trying to recreate this place, It’s a real challenge, the shops have to be owned due to the non-sellable custom thingy in community lots, I have been downloading strange and beautiful objects for England this week. I want to re-create Glastonbury Abby, The Assembly Rooms (medieval hall that holds everything artistic daily and bands at the weekend, not the mention the café that hosts the informal groups of every club in the town. The Chalice Well and maybe the Tor although that will be a challenge as Sims have no concept of History or appreciating beautiful views. The Cross is also a great idea, it’s the town centre where all the people who drink in the surrounding pubs, hotels and cafes end up sitting together jamming, singing, drumming, joking and just having a good time. Then there are the Cafes the mind boggles! They are indescribable, this is a café culture and each one has a ‘thing’ going on, I have no chance of re-creating that level of complexity.

I am hoping to make a beautiful, totally unpredictable town like this one, although I think the random unplanned street parades may be hoping for too much.

Too often, my sims reach top of their career and I'm bit bored currently so I thought I could make Matt Patel and his gay roommate get money by.. freestyle, playing music and such. I hope I'll soon get over with that goddamn rich Tatton family because it's too boring to play with rich families.

Sweet...thanks for this...also I wish they would of made castaway an expansion lol

This is a long thread and I haven't read it in months,but I suggest trying some of the different challenges.The legacy challenge is a good one because you play without cheats and let your sims die as you play their heirs. The more generations you play the family the more things they can do with them.

There are so many great ideas. Im thinking of playing a sim who is poor and living in squalid conditions....no skills, a family of three with a crappy paid job all in the hope of fixing up his home and sending his kids to uni?

Go for it. The important thing in this or any game is to play it the way that's fun for you. Fun does not equal easy, and you get out of it what you put into it. If you get the most pleasure out of power gaming, then by all means focus on building goal-directed sims and doing nothing but playing their LTWs; if you like social interactions more, then focus on playing relationships and let the LTWs take care of themselves, or even block them. I like building communities and feel a little cheated in any session where I don't strengthen interpersonal bonds among my characters, even if all the sims on a lot are maxed at socials and logically should be working on skills. I think most of us enjoy the game most when the sims have a little room to surprise us with spontaneous behavior, but some people want to control everything.

If you're bored with a game, you're not doing it right. Play the game differently, or play something else.

Sometimes, playing some other game is the best advice of all. No matter how much you may love the Sims, you can burn out on it.

Yes-that is true. Right now I'm waiting for another gift of M&G from a dear friend, but I'm kinda burned out on the game, so I'm playing others right now. Probably by the time it arrives, I will have enough ambition to fire it up again.
Too much of a good thing can dampen your enthusiasm for it.
After all, the game will still be there when you return, ready to take up where you left off.

That is a pretty brilliant idea! I should try that. :D

I found out last night using the latest version of SimPE (which corresponds to AL and M&G) that there is a list of traits for each sim along side their "turn on's and turn offs" setting in the NL section.

Now I'm going to really be able to do traits so much better than I have been able to!

This changes a lot of the game variety now that I've found that-and will make it a bit more easy to use the AV sim traits scenario, found here:

http://behindthescenesofapplevalley.../label/gameplay

and here:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub...=en&output=html

Trying making a neighborhood with a national theme(i.e. one neighborhood is Ireland, one is America, one is Egypt,etc.). Then look for custom content that suits that theme. Build all of your buildings in the style of the buildings in that country. Give all of your sims names from that culture. Make sims movies about it. It's a lot of fun because it gives you a goal. I've currently got an Irish neighborhood called Dundalk, Ireland. All of the sim families there have Irish last names(i.e. Sullivan, Murphy,etc.). The town has a pub and 2 churches. They all have Irish flags at their houses. It's all Irish.

I am so mad. I created the old Amityville Horror House, and I even have a drawing of the floorplans from a book on the original murders and Lutz story. I created the entire three bedroom house, along with the DeFeo family, and had the older son kill the family off with the assault rifle, and then I moved in the Lutz family (keeping all the urns in the secret hidden room in the basement so they would haunt)

I even downloaded the prison system and sent the killer son to jail once the Lutzs' moved in. Then, after six months of continuous playing with no problems, my game decided to start glitching out on my Amityville Horror house, lol. And I was so looking forward to playing it, but now I'm afraid to touch it. I probably made the house way too big, and now with six urns and a family of five living there it's probably too much for the game to handle at once. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

This has been mentioned before, but when I get bored of Sims, I often go play something else. The huge difference of leading peoples' lives on Sims and mowing down zombies makes you appreciate both games more. xD
I also take days off to read through various stories from fellow Simmers....they give me ideas. It's actually due to a certain story that I booted up Strangetown the other day and paired up Ripp and Johnny, hehe.

I noticed someone say that getting abducted is almost a myth in the game, but I started getting abducted so much that it was getting annoying -- and I wasn't even cheating! One thing I noticed is that the sim always had a high enthusiasm for the science hobby, so I guess it helps to have Freetime. When your sim is able to "search for planets," they should get abducted frequently. I had Cassandra Goth get abducted twice on accident, and a few other sims in Strangetown as well. These were all accidents and kinda annoying seeing as I was trying to build logic skills. Guess I should've had the chess board instead.

Another way to make the game fun is to build a custom neighborhood with some of your own custom lots. You can use maxis and downloaded lots, but make sure that a good number of your lots are custom made (at least the community lots). It is extra fun if your townies in the game have custom hair and faces.

(You can go here to get cleaned up neighborhoods so the game doesn't re-spawn the same townies)
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,4306.0.html

You can get custom face templates here
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=229016

You can get custom hair here
http://www.***/main/main2.php
http://www.xmsims.com/sims2/ehtm/main/index.htm

I have a custom neighborhood called Valenta with custom townies and a several average quality community lots made by me, but it is really fun playing in a neighborhood i made

To me the ability to customize the game is what makes it STILL fun. I have changed all the defaults possible: faces, eyes, skin, names, lipstick, and all the "absent dads". Instead of the standard no-nose green father of all abductee babies, I have 2 sets of alien dads, each with 3 differant possible dads. Also the dad of plant babies, and - um, isn't there another absent dad? THEN I have some can't-do-without mods: large families (including pets), differant number of days for ages (love playing with toddlers, have little use for elders - and I AM ONE!), ACR, etc.

Have them lose all their money on a bad investment. Have them move to a trailer on the "bad side of town", etc. then they'll become fun again.

Here's something a little different. I did this when I got bored. I created a new family called the Randomly family. I made 5 family members and used whatever came up randomly in CAS. I didn't change their looks or clothing.
For their house I chose one of the premade maxis lots, then furnished it with all the wierd random crap that I NEVER use in my other homes. All the ugly maxis stuff, Myshuno game, etc.

i still haven't done alot of things with ts2, so that keeps me going, plus doing other things like playing other games

After creating a very large and diverse neighborhood for the Mega hood, I'm tempted to play it with a twist: the neighborhood goes broke, totally. Everyone loses 2/3rds of their money, and their houses...all those pretty houses.
Put them in substandard quarters and watch their moods drain. Yes, It's tempting, especially since the rich ones love their houses. Too bad if I'm being impossible, isn't it?

I love Pleasantview but i feel i want to make a change in my game by having a hood of my own with my own sims i've created so;

I downloaded a pre decorated hood named Carnen Bridge I had intended on renaming it but i felt the name sorta stuck so kept it as it was.

Now i've put some Community Lots in, and I've almost finished the residential part of the hood.

I've used lots by An_Nas and Orange_Alex (Search for their livejournals, for lots, they're awesome).

The only subhoods i've added for this main hood is Sim State Uni and the Vacation places, I don't see the point in a Business hood when everything i need is already there in the main hood and downtown i only ever use two lots (Londoste and The gothic night club) and i've got some Makeovers of those two in my main hood already so set there.

Once the lots are finished and i've added a some finishing touches to hood deco like a few trees here and there i'll get onto making the sims.

I'm also thinking about doing my first EVER legacy in Carnen Bridge, Played sims for 7 odd years and never tried one properly, better late than never i suppose.

Hah, I cheat way too much, I am a motherlode and boolprop addict, hehe.

In order to keep the information about each household more or less intact, I've finally found a program that allows me to list out a few lines about the households as I'm playing with suitable editing-it's a diary program, and it's free.
http://www.splinterware.com/products/idailydiary.htm

It looks like a real diary, and it lets you type in unlimited lines of text-with formatting included. Great way to track this stuff and keep tabs on where the hood is at in game play. This will definitely help my game stay interesting for a long while!

I am intrigued! Downloading it now - if I like it, I will definitely be able to find many many uses for it, so thank you for the link FranH! :-) Roll on the start of me actually playing my Uber-Megahood - getting everyone madeover and moved into their new homes is proving time consuming....!

I know exactly what you mean! I had to get something to do it with, because with 50+ families in the "uber" hood, there is just no sensible way to memorize any of it..what I do is I format the names of the families to be in a different color than the usual text, and note what specific incidents happened on the day I played it. I do rotation play, and am nearly done with the first day! (yes, no joke!) It's Monday in the hood, and in the diary-(of course you have to ignore that the date in the diary is the same day in RL, but I pretend a lot!).
But because I play with a mod that slows down the game play I am able to capture a lot of the action while it's happening. I can note who got promoted, demoted, bonuses, and other sundry things. It's been very fun so far!

I am so gonna do this when I reinstall University. I always Motherlode my Teens when I get them to University, even after checking to see if they won any scholarships/grants before sending them.

I just did this LOL I uninstalled everything (including my downloaded clothes, decorations and vehicles which I may add back). I am only using the Holiday Edition (Base Game plus Happy Holidays Stuff). HOWEVER, when I get back home, I'm gonna reinstall all Stuff Pack, and Pets and Bon Voyage, unless someone can tell me any objects, Sims or interactions I will not get if I go this route. I know I won't be able to go on vacation or have pets, but I never do in my game anyway.

I will deleteallcharacters and go with a Legacy Challenge and Prosperity Challenge and see what happens. Also, I will give up being a control freak EXCEPT when it comes to University.

In another thread, I was openly asking how to build a pawn shop (this is with OFB, of course). This is assuming that you have other venues in the NH that sell items.

I have discovered the way to do it, and to make a huge profit:

This is a 'little' cheaty, but if you prefer the old fashioned way of pricing and selling, all the more power to you-but this is what I did to open the Pleasantview Pawnshop.

1. Buy a community lot that is enabled for a shop-with shelves, an 'open sign' and a cash register.
2. Buy a few small items, price them 'ridiculously cheap' and then open your shop.
3. Wait for a customer. When one shows up, pause the game and make them selectable.
4. While they're still selectable, open up their inventory for items and remove those that might be saleable in your shop. Then unselect the customer.
5. Place the items from their inventory on the ground, or on a shelf and price them with the 'Business build' tool set on 'wholesale' price. They should show up as marked for sale in 'ridiculously cheap' (X amount of simoleons).

The cheaty parts: I use the Simlogical 'autorestocker' and the 'auto cash register' to improve sales. The 'autorestocker' can be set to 'restock for free' which is how I set it, and the cash register frees up the help to assist customers in their buying. I also use the 'auto-open' sign from Simlogical. I told you this way is a cheaty thing, didn't I?

Link: http://www.drealm.info/simlogical/s...s/Sims2_OFB.htm

Anyway, my shop made tons of money on the first day, and quickly got stocked with inventory items that are just flying off the shelves! In fact, it will probably have to be expanded very shortly due to the incredible amount of furniture being pawned by customers!

Yeah that's way I liked it when I seen evil doers career points and a new farming career now there is other careers I would like to download sence I'm a trucker by trader and heavy equipment operater so when I'm off duty I like to play Sims 2 when my computer was up and running it's down now but I'm going to get it running soon and have fun playing Sims2 again.
But back to careers Sims a few evil doers I forgot was Evil Killer Car-Jackers;they'er Evil-J,Skinner,dd,Awful Ernest he runs a chopshop with AcAlbert he throw acid if the Sims snoops around & BJ mostly kill their sims victims,when jack their cars mostly for from the big city NL,but is compatble with other and others their are other car-jacker and carthieves these less killer carjackers might kidnap your Sims if they are in the way and will sell you sims to
evil doers mob bosses,mad doctors,pimps, prevert creeps,Mean Circus Ring Masters,other chopshop bosses
Vampires,WereWolves. but these carjackers are most be in your BV,OFB,Pets,ApptL. and can be FreeTime,
the car thieves are like the burglers they'll wonder by your Sims wheels once or twice notice nobody around no alarm
they'll steal your Sims ride and could go any where to Pleasentville Strangeville,any place into the big city NL. the nice thing is they never will harm a Sims and few these guys are RJ,Speedy,WreckerWilly (WreckerWilly drives a 70 Chevy tow truck or a tilt bed 80's IHC F-1954S-Line
Tandem tilt bed truck and he swipes classic and rare cars and trucks old vintage farm tractors he's
more your low life of society Sims not a Evil doer he first strike is he'll come to buy you FreeTime
car or watch closely that vacan lot with old cars on it he'll come in and snag them at times.
He maybe a nossences until the law ketch up with him maybe they aren't after him when he's picking up old vehicles out of towns again he means no harm.
So we got your Evil doers, We need hide outs and lairs,for instance who is the burgler and where
do they go when not burglerizing some place? Well then lets give them a hide out Base Game Unv. large old house,NLF,OFB,Pets ,Season,BV,FT,Apt.L. they live in Large house and yard
warehouse,old run down appt. now if they are the ones that also kidnap.Then it's hide outs which are old warehouses with lots of noisie factory machinery,old abandon schools,and old hospitals.
or ServiceStations just out of town,and have so they can meet their fence or buyers,also have they police investagaters watching them and a ventually arresting them either robbing a house again or in the proccess of dealing. one of the two,now the evil serial killers will sometimes travel
around or stay. If stay they Live Out in the country in run down ram-shackled shack,maybe a trailer house,mostly old abandon warehouses or spooky old abandon hotels&motels creepy old trainstations,abandon miltary base,old abandon schools,Scary old Farms and Cabins now the best of them all old Service Station.Traveling killer old motorhome truckcamper,old vans,and Old R.V. converted School Buses,some Boats.maybe.Kidnappers Lairs for kidnapers for rasom are
warehouses old abandon School old Churches,boats,old closed down motels and cabins,now for
kidnappers for whoohoo their house,or appt.,motorhomes,boats,old closed down department stores,warehouse,cabin in the woods, out in the country farm houses,Vampire Lairs,basements of
the big high rises old abandon School old Hotels/Motels;Mad Doctors Hide outs and Lairs,
their big fancy house,old warehouse, and old abandon hospitals,old close down schools,shutdown
miltary bases,their boats and closed down airplane hangers their fancy Summer Beach House.
Pimps and Gangsters Pimps their Loft or penthouse suite,Gangsters their Nightclub basement,
their fancy large house with hostage cells one in the basement then out hidin guesthouse.The Spy
Hide out is ship,milatary base old closed hospital,old closed schools,a warehouse,basement of
old appartment.
The other career like trucking also good for OFB and mechanic,welder,autobody,heavy equipment operater career can use a loader or other heavy equipment.

I make movies when I get bored. It is quite fun setting up scenes and making stories. If I get really bored I'll put on Sims Life Stories again and play with Riley and Vincent. It makes Sims 2 seem more fun as it has more options and CC. I can't live without it.

If you create families then play them till you're bored and they're old - play on rotation. The rotation in my neighbourhoods lasts 2 days so I play each family for 2 days or university lots for 2 years (4 semesters) to keep it balanced. I keep a log of this on notepad so it's always there when I play. Playing in a rotation means you play each household for a small time so they don't become boring and so that your families stay the same time part (your sims don't become elders before their parents). Boring families still get played too because they're only played for a small time.
I've also started to keep a diary on notepad too of the things that are happening with my sims or that I would like to happen the next time I play.
Having stories for families is definitely fun too. I just created an italian family all with genuine italian names after researching them online. I added a grandfather to the family too and already he has high chemistry with his son's wife so that should be fun. They now run a small italian restaurant which is great to play.
Theme subhoods are fun too. I added 2 more sub-hoods districts - one a mountain and one a beach using all the lots I've downloaded like beach houses and forest retreats. Creating community lots like woodland furniture shops are fun too.
I've moved some sims from the main neighbourhood to the mountains and the beach and created some sims too. Mountain sims dress in more outwear type clothing all the time as the season is always autumn or winter and live in more forest style, country houses with gardens. Beach sims dress in very summery clothes like shorts all the time as it is always summer and they live on beach lots or lots with pools and outdoor seating. So much fun using all these lots and not having a neighbourhood mixed with forest country homes and beach lots. Also I've gone on holiday with my sims less than 5 times since I installed BV in 2 years so it's nice to use all the new items and there are great versions of BV lots on MTS2 only made smaller so they don't have long loading times that you can put in your neighbourhood. Maybe one day I'll make a far east district....

Yeah lets make it more interestly fun I have other ideas of evil doers
 

First think is yeaa for Evil Doers I was mentioning Drug Dealers they don't generally kill any Sims they will how ever capiture them if to snoopy and mostly teens or young adult females which they beat,torture and sell or trade them to the mobboss for favores our,
will end up in the hospital rescued by our nieghborhood EMS worker they'll take you straight to Hospital Emerg. then our Sims will be visit by the Police SVU. and then go and
arrest them. If they them to the mobboss he will kill them when they get too old or they
won't work rite for their crooked casinos or work as positutes they will kill them.
Evil Doctor Death or Doctoc T for torture they are two different Doctors and they are both serial killers one Evil Doctor D kills guest as they come to his home which is a old
abandonned hospitals they seem to favor,the other Evil Doctor T has henchmen to kidnap
their vics. where the henchmen will grap the Sims at their homes maybe not often,teen
Sims at hang out like arcade,mall,swimming pool and parks,young adults at Campus hang outs mall swimming pools bars and night clubs,adult Sims at home sometimes,stores,gyms,
B.V. Spas,swimming pools,nightclubs at work as ie. P.I.'s,Police,Solders.And burglers
are known at times to sell them victims,well that it for now.

Yeah lets make it more interestly fun I have other ideas of evil doers
 

First think is yeaa for Evil Doers I was mentioning Drug Dealers they don't generally kill any Sims they will how ever capiture them if to snoopy and mostly teens or young adult females which they beat,torture and sell or trade them to the mobboss for favores our,
will end up in the hospital rescued by our nieghborhood EMS worker they'll take you straight to Hospital Emerg. then our Sims will be visit by the Police SVU. and then go and
arrest them. If they them to the mobboss he will kill them when they get too old or they
won't work rite for their crooked casinos or work as positutes they will kill them.
Evil Doctor Death or Doctoc T for torture they are two different Doctors and they are both serial killers one Evil Doctor D kills guest as they come to his home which is a old
abandonned hospitals they seem to favor,the other Evil Doctor T has henchmen to kidnap
their vics. where the henchmen will grap the Sims at their homes maybe not often,teen
Sims at hang out like arcade,mall,swimming pool and parks,young adults at Campus hang outs mall swimming pools bars and night clubs,adult Sims at home sometimes,stores,gyms,
B.V. Spas,swimming pools,nightclubs at work as ie. P.I.'s,Police,Solders.And burglers
are known at times to sell them victims to Evil Doctor T .
Evil Doctor T can make some simmollion working for the Mobbosses,Evil Dictators,Pimps
and Evil Spies.The for the Dictator and Spies they travel B.V.,but again usually has a old
closed down insane asylume or hospital that they worked at once.their henchmen are some wicked nurses,evil orderlies,awful ambulance drivers in which is the vehicle of choice for abduction if some could create the classicy 63 Caddilac Supiour Ambulance would be awsome.and of course Choloraforme,Sleeping,pills and or syrnge and needles full of sleeping agent or knock out agent.So the Evil Doc doesn't live there as the Evil Doctor D. who lives in the Spooky old hospital,the other doc lives in a fancy house and will drive a Jeg,MB 450S,Lexus,Caddilac Escalade,or Caddy Fleetwood.
And Evil Killer Country hic like any good horror movies lives out in a Spooky Country back woods either in old run down farm family house,cabin,or mobilehomes,either with wacky socopath inbread family or live alone weapons of choice big butcher knife,3 different guns,axe and a chainsaw also a oh dear excuse me for this trible clesha but a old Mantle Saw used in other laimo old B&W villian movies for the vic. demize,working on Sims serial killers the differances, canabal one can also be country hic or sicko city deweller they perfer females,then we got the Blackwidow type Sims she moves to one rich bachalor the
(Blackwidow ) she starts out as a young adult and evenually is elderly and she nevers has off spring.well I'm leaving now so I don't bore anybody these are just my idea sugguestions.

I have stories going in a few hoods, but don't play some hoods at all. It does really get boring micro-manageing "smart" successful sims. So I created some original couples and really tweeked them; like the alien "blues devels" - totally mean, & I encourage everyone to fight. Or my frogs that are total slobs and have lots of babies. Or I'll pick a family I'm bored with & give each exactly what they want - & nothing else. So if the teenager wants lots of lovers I supply them, but otherwise don't control him at all. Usually they wind up totally unhappy, sleeping through school, losing jobs, starving. Sometimes I will pick a toddler from a big family I'm bored with, and only work with other family members if the toddler wants/needs something - to the point that the toddler is always happy while everone else is missing work and exhausted (never mind the trashed house). I can usually keep SOMEONE alive long enough for the toddler to become a teen.

Or I'll pick a family I'm bored with & give each exactly what they want - & nothing else.

I like this idea. I think it makes a nice alternative to an ISBI/Asylum style of play (which I fail at, because I want to know everything about my Sims). Sims can still be madly dysfunctional when they're not in aspiration failure.

I've found this program, http://www.splinterware.com/products/idailydiary.htm
which imitates a real diary (it's free, too!) and have set up a day to day diary of all the families by name-so that every time I play a family, I put the daily happenings into it.

Believe me, it's very useful when you're playing 60 families and can't remember what happened at which lot!

The advantages of the program: it can be edited from within and you have a lot of style choices for the diary, even in the free version-and there's no limit to the size of the pages you write on.

How I've set mine up: I track the day within the game-The day (Monday), "Highlights of the day" at the top, and then an individual lot listing for every family, with separation lines between the families. Of course if something interesting happens during the game I will pause it and then write it down in the diary to make sure I don't forget it.

If I've lost track of what's doing where, I just refer back to the previous day and read the comments I put in the family listing.

Great way to keep track of everyone and make a running commentary on the game while you're playing it. I can't recommend it too highly!

I'm currently playing a BACC, and I play the families for one sim week each. All the families are doing good, as are their businesses. But even though this is a BACC, I keep falling into my usual rut of utter boredomness... I've had a couple of break-ups, which have kept me interested, but that does not last long. The families are all perfect, they have great businesses, and the children are all perfect as well. It bores me to the point that I want to start over, but I'd rather not do that, seeing as I have accomplished a lot in this BACC recently. I would love to get some tips to make playing more fun. If you'll excuse me, I have to go read through the rest of this thread.

Thank you..This is really helpful...Serious,thank you (:

Mazolix, what you need is an ROS!!!
A Random Occurence Scenario if you don't already know, is a list of negative and positive events which can occur to one of your sim families. You roll dice or use an online dice roller, or use Hook's Randomizer

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,8253.0.html)

to determine the event, choose which family suffers (or enjoys!) the event, and then play it out.

As far as I can determine to date, the idea was originally inspired by Staysee, and written up by Jade Eliott; check out this thread: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...p?topic=12374.0

(look at the attachments at the bottom of the first post).
Here's another similar idea: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=341154

You can also create your own.
I have created two for use with two challenges I play:
a Victorian ROS for use with the Victorian Population Challenge or other Victorian challenges, and a
Medieval ROS for the Medieval Charter Challenge (which I also created) or other Medieval challenges.

Hope this helps!
Cheers, Vllygrl

One thing that I found (and I'm not going to give the link-18+ over age restriction) is a mod by Chris Hatch that slows down the speed of the game by half. What this means is that all actions take real life time to do-and thus you can almost 'live' the simmies lives as they get older, etc.
I have been using this mod along with another from ChristianLov that allows sims to introduce themselves and not leave the lot-this link is to that mod, from his new site. It's called the visitor manager, and it is seriously awesome:http://blog.daum.net/christianlov
You will find all of his mods on this site, and they're updated to the last EP, I think. Don't be dismayed by the Korean language on the page or in the pictures. He made sure to translate the mods into English.

I tend to get burned out on sims at times. So, I just get more stuff to keep it going. I tried the get old thing and playing my offspring and it ended up being boring, I like your options though!

Well, I kind of make my own challenges as I go along with the game (I did the find how many relationships one can have without getting caught - 16 for me...)!

I also try to follow my sims wants and wishes to a tee, as opposed to just making a family. It's quite fun. For instance, if a teen or child sim doesn't want to do their homework (it doesn't show up in the "Wants" category), and want to play video games instead, then I won't force them to do it. It's a cool way to handle it.

To be honest, I got the idea from Chickadeelee Sims' (chickadeelee.livejournal.com) game/challenge. I really found that it was a cool way to play - without making it so very drab.

Suggestions, comments?

- A

Wait...what?

Walk away antoniabgonia, walk away...

Forgot to tell you what I do. If I get bored with the game, I will scrap everything, uninstall and start completely fresh. It is amazing what a fresh install will do for my motivation. I then add back some of the CC and start building the hood again. Works every time

After a couple of months of not playing The Sims 2, I have come to appreciate it again. I still have my Pokemon trainer sims. (Some weren't made by me in that I downloaded some of the ones made here and the ones I made were Frankensteined from other CC\expansion packs\stuff packs I had.)

Also, an uninstall then reinstall usually helps. Of course, if you have ALL the EPs\SPs, including Happy Holidays, then you would know how much of a pain the uninstall-reinstall can be. But I love new stuff added to an old thing.

Sorry to bump an old thread but since I'm still actively playing Sims2 and always up for a challenge, there are some mildly interesting ones to be discovered over on TSR that may be interesting to some without having to download the (unnecessary) program /packages that come with their site-integrated Challenge system. (Unless you're into that sort of thing.)

Just wanted to pop in and say, that this was an extremely helpful thread.

I have been stuck in a sim rut.. without even knowing it! haha
My simmies are in for a whole new world... starting with living off the land .

Thanks a ton for sharing this.

I usually have a lot of amazing storylines that i think up, but legacies don't get interesting until the second or third generation-I can't last that long- and apocalypses are way too hard. One of the things i do to mix it up is change my writing style. Sometimes I play with a simself interacting with the sims, sometimes it's the voice-from-the-sky bit, and a new style I've been meaning to try is the "diary" style. Obviously, it's written in the first-person, and the sim keeps a book in their inventory representing the "diary." Then, when the next gen. heir goes off to college, or when they turn into an adult, (depending on which EPs you have) the first person passes it on to their successor, and the writing style begins from that person, and so on. It's going to be really fun!

This guides awesome! Even if I may not use it.. It tells you to experience the game how it really is, not just using mods& CC and boolprop to make your sims lifes easier.

I made a mad cat-lady with, like 6 cats in the house and she annoys all the other sims. It's funny when she comes by the other sims and starts nagging.
Also I made a crazy party-loving bunch of ugly sims. They do nothing but party and are as untidy as it could possibly be. Every day they invite all the other sims or go to downtown to mess up the whole place.
Then I made a grumpy girl, wich is very agressive (not nice at all). Sims must be careful around her, and absolutely never ever play ball or tease her.
Btw, I wanted to say that this tread is really helpful. EA makes the games so that they just can sell more and the people want to buy new ones instead of playing the old stuff over again. So I like it that there is such a big fan community here. :lovestruc

Whenever I get bored I play my family that I only play without cheats, mess around with moveObjects on, or just log off and play The Movies or Smallworlds.

I recently created a gay family to see how that would work out...it's kind of interesting...although strange. I watch them try to adopt and deal with their "gayness" since they are both in the closet and have not come out to their families due to fear of rejection. They also both have "side" hags who are female and these girlfriends come over whenever the parents visit to pretend to be their girlfriends...it's very very funny to watch hahaha.

I also did a themed neighborhood, 19th century...I had soooooo much fun it was totally enjoyable and i learned so much history!

Right now i am working on a Transgender family where the wife is a trans person and she is hiding it from her husband..LOL. They never woohoo or anything so he doesnt know that his wife has a secret weapon. Only frustrating thing is that i can't find a way to attach a peen on her when she showers or add a bulge to her panties...which can be very frustrating. So instead i make her wear a strap-on under her shorts LOL