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.