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Keeping the Game Interesting!
We've all had that problem at one time or another: Sims 2 just seems boring. We play the same sorts of families and the same scenarios and it's just no fun! So how do you keep from getting bored? Here are my suggestions - add your own to this thread and I'll incorporate the best ones into the first post.
 Play differently! If you're stuck in a rut of "couple gets together, gets married, has babies, work to the top of their careers" type stuff, then stop it! Start a new family and play it utterly differently than you normally do! It's refreshing to get out of your comfort zone. Try: Unused game features! Most of us have several EPs... and a great number of us have never used a lot of the features! Now's a great time to try out things you never have before, and maybe discover fun new aspects of the game you hadn't thought of! Try a challenge! There are tons of cool game challenges which you can try - ranging from long-term challenges like the Legacy Challenge, to shorter, crazier challenges like the Asylum Challenge. These challenges usually have certain rules (which you can choose to follow or not!) and direct you to play a certain way. Live off the land! This works best if you have Seasons for fishing and gardening, but you can use Echo's harvestable crops if you don't have Seasons. Make a family, make a house for them, don't cheat, and have them live off their garden and pond exclusively - no buying groceries, no working outside of the home (though they can do other activities like crafting as long as they stay at home), and children don't go to school. If they get successful enough, you can have them sell off some of their excess produce to other sims in the neighborhood... you can even run the whole neighborhood off the land - all food must be purchased from your farmers! Learn to create! For many people, this can be just as fun and addictive (if not more so!) than actually playing the game. With all the help, support, tutorials, and info available to you, why not try it? Some of the more advanced stuff can be quite complicated, but you may surprise yourself at how well you do at simple things like walls and floors and recolouring objects and clothing. Play something else! Shocking, I know! But absence does make the heart grow fonder, and if you're just bored as hell with TS2, go play something else! There are tons of fun games out there - go play an RPG, a first-person shooter, a city-builder, an arcade game - whatever you like, just something different. Put TS2 aside for a day, a week, a month, and then come back later once you're refreshed. |
Ah, awesome suggestions! I'm especially intrigued with the idea of Living Off The Land!
Usually, I just create really different Sims.. I feel like creating a multiple-twin, huge family again.. Hmm... And at the moment I have a freshly created Shy Sim! Her last name is actually Shy... Lol. :D |
My Suggestion: If you get bored of Happy Families and "safe", no drama couples but won't cause drama yourself because your a control freak (like me) Then install ACR (Autonomous Casual Romance) and let it do the job for you. Best thing I ever did. Any info you want about it is at the link provided C: |
When I'm in a total rut, I watch the opening movie for things I've never done, and then go do them. That usually leads me down an entire day of Simming with thing's I've never seen them do before.
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when the game nauseates me, i just stop playing or i'll play ts1 again.
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Wow great tips!
Yeah im a control freak my self, And my sim family always ends up beeing the picture perfect family, Since i max out their skills as soon as i can, thus landing them any job they want. They i get some kids and i raise them the best i can which always gets me a "grow up well" and a full aspiration meter. Which makes it SOOO boring its just that im a fraid to what will happen to my simmies if i start drama ;_;!!! But thanks for the sims! now ive got some idea to make MY siming experice more fun, Instead of keeping my simies safe. haha |
You have some great advice. This should be stickied!
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Personally, I have three entire neighborhoods going (I long ago erased Strangetown, etc.). Each neighborhood has a different theme thing going on. One hood is straight out picture perfect, no cheating, playing as intended, which I've had going for a long time.
The second hood is my Springerville, where everyone is bi, no one gets married, everyone cheats on their lovers, everyone has multiple babies by multiple partners (naturally, inteen and insem are happily used here). Most of the sims are romance or pleasure sims, and cheating is the expected thing. 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. Whatever, the point being is that play according to different rules--or no rules at all--in different neighborhoods. |
hey guys, I just got this game this afternoon and i can't post threads (i dont know why)
Anyways, I made a sim adult, and after about 2 hours of playing he grew old! then after another 2 hours he died! can anyone explain this to me? i really am dissapointed if sims cant live for more than 5 hours. in sims 1, they lived forever until some kind of accident, but my sim was the picture of health! Please help thanksBy the way, I have sims2 double deluxe |
Quote: Originally posted by BDF92
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How do I use that?
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http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?...ame_Help:Cheats
Read the How to Use section first, then scroll down to Gameplay Cheats to find that specific one. |
Thanks for the help. It stinks that I cant just pause death by age : /
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Well I keep having this problem where I get easily bored like most of your I suppose. I keept trying new things (including things on here) But the most fun one so far is having my own home business. Infact I spent the whole day today just making money through my business. I love it, and yes I'm a geek. I think the best idea to stay interested is just try different aspirations. Like I ALWAYS use Family aspiration with a few exeptions but recently I've been trying pleasure and romance and even fortune, which before now I hated.
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One really good way of keeping the game interesting, is playing it with a dice. If you make a cas sim, let a dice decide evrything - apsiration, personality, turn ons. If it's a transition to a teen, then let the dice determine the aspiration, and keep the turnons the game gives you. It forces you to play different, when the sim who would make a great family sim, ends up being a romance sim.
I completely agree with everything said here, epsecially the play different scenarios, getting stuck in going to work and getting promotions rut does get boring in the long run. About the stop cheating for more money and start cheating for less is probably the best advice ever - I would recommend linking it to the "Let the cruelty begin" thread, that was a nice one with lots of advice and links. |
If you're stuck in a rut of "couple gets together, gets married, has babies, work to the top of their careers"
That is SO me! I think some of these ideas are superb and I can't wait to try them out. |
Being a control freak (like me) can ruin a lot of the surprises and contribute to boredom. I'm trying to find ways to back off and let my sims be stupid - er, I mean fun and spontaneous. I'm going to set up one house in a pseudo Asylum Challenge so I can still be obsessive about one sim but have to tolerate the behavior of the others. I'm trying in general not to give commands unless it's something the sim will never do independently (like pay bills) or I'm satisfying a want.
Even if you don't want to abandon control-freakishness (or whatever your style is) cold turkey, try setting up just one house where you completely violate your normal play. You might hate it, but you might find it refreshes your interest. |
Agh that just pleased my mind. I feel like rushing to my sims now. But I'm scared I might cheat :o
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Hah, just when I was going to go search for threads like this, lo and behold, here it is.
My families are too perfect, and then I get too lazy to actually DO something different. But these are really interesting ideas! Thanks HP! |
lmao, I've done all those things you mentioned with exception to suggestions involving EPs I don't have, but all the EPs you have mentioned, I've done it. I've done it all.
I used to be one of those players that had aging off and avoided sims becoming elders but then I started reading legacies and they seemed like a lot of fun and something I'd never done before so I gave it a shot. I'm in my third generation now with the 3G kids in college. This is what I've found during play. Elders are boring and I don't like aging them up in platinum because their boringness lasts and lasts and lasts. But now I'm looking into alternatives to letting them age up in moderate happiness. Sim death is amusing as hell. So are ghosts. I've had sims abducted by aliens in strangetown quite a few times, but only through cheating. Even with better odds hacks and hacked telescopes I've never seen the full cinematic and trying to do it the garden variety way is hard! I don't want to have to stoop to going the curious house just to see it but I think I'll have to. The odds of abduction are in the ranges of legendary and myth rather than a genuine part of the game. Like cow tipping and people dragging back rats from Mexico whom they thought were dogs. I ran three businesses, all getting them up to ten rank and then sold them and started up a new one. I did this through the founder sim's life. Running a business on a community lot gives a sim a very, very, very long life! If you're into short lifespans or want to get on with generations, running a community business is not for you. Running a home business isn't much better. They'll age of course on the lot, but once you start a home business, better make sure you keep your doors locked at all times because random townies will wander in uninvited, use your bathroom, eat your food, play with your objects, and steal your babies! (True story if you don't have the patch that prevents guests from walking off with chilluns.) I've had vampires. Both cheated and honestly. I found it to be fun and pointless. They got fat easily, there was nothing much to do with them and even though they did a lot of cool things, it just didn't feel like vampirism. No blood-drinking, no night stalking, no REALLY awesome powers, like strength, mind-reading, shape-shifting... it's just someone who doesn't age, who doesn't need to eat or sleep or have fun or shit, and stays up all night watching tv. Totally exciting. I dug for treasure and often found maps and used them, heading to all the vacation places and gathering the vacation souvenirs. This is what I discovered: it's the most regretful thing you'll ever do to your game. The constant sea chanties, tai chi, hula and gestures will take over like some horrible cult where you'll be canceling actions left and right and it just... doesn't... end. Once you've sent a family on vacation and idiotically let them learn that crap, you'll never want to send another family out there again. You're not sure you'll let the ones who have learned it continue to live. The disease must be contained at all costs or the pandemic will spread rapidly and soon your entire neighborhood will be infected with tai, sea chanties, and gestures the like of which is unimaginable! I send my teens to college but it's not something I actually look forward to. Even when I let the YAs slack off they STILL make the dean's list. It used to be that I let them work hard and earn their grades but this time, I had very rich kids going to college who didn't need to earn the high grades and land a high-paying job. So I let them slack off, using influence to have other people write their term papers. They still made the dean's list. It annoys me how easy University is and I figured out why that is. Sims have only ONE class to go to. One two-hour class that's their major? WTH? When I was going to college, I had to take several courses, most of which I didn't even need and had to write term papers for EACH of those courses, not just one. If college bound sims had to go to several two-hour classes of a day and write three or more term papers for each of those classes, then I'd be willing to forgive the fact that they go to college for free. Uni is easy, it's LONG, and it's boring. I'm so happy when they graduate and get home ready to start the next gen and they do and then the next gen become teens and I'm all like, "I have to do all that AGAIN!?" There is something else I haven't done and never had an interest in, and I'm not sure I'll play it through. I might play out the storylines set up in the premade hoods. Like the Beaker, Curious, Grunt, Spector houses and whomever else might be there. Or the Pleasantview stories, or Veronville, Riverblossom, you get the point. Another suggestion for keeping the game interesting? Do the exact opposite of the aspirations Have a family sim? Let them become elder without having kids. Have a fortune sim? Let him borrow money from the bank using Monique's hacked computer to buy all the stuff they want and have them in dept for the rest of their lives till they can't pay the bills anymore and then watch their stuff get repo-ed. Have a popularity sim? Instead of 20 mutual best friends, make him or her a mean sim and create 20 mutual enemies. Romance sim? Make the sim ugly and turn them into creepy stalker types! Unleash them unto sims they like and have them do romantic interactions that are too soon for the relationship points so they'd be rejected. Knowledge sim? Max out all skills and then intentionally make bad choices in the chance cards to cost them their skills till they lose all the skills they've learned. |
Quote: Originally posted by Annababy
Ever since I read this about a month ago I knew I had to do it immediately. This has really renewed my love for the game. It's made me a lot more familiar with manipulating custom content and I've learned a good bit about history too! My family is British and the year is now 1900 (about four generations in) so we will be switching from Victorian to Edwardian soon. The posher Sims are ahead of the curve, the more traditional Sims change things more slowly (for example, they adopt technology a while after it's available). I've got technology timelines and looked up both the invent dates and the "common use" dates for everything in the game. Can't wait until I can use a good fridge! I also love paying attention to the arts and fads of the times. Our more adventurous and creative types are really into Art Nouveau right now. I'm keeping to all the rules like you, the women don't work except lower classes who work as servants and don't marry (although I got the treadle sewing machine from mts2 so middle class ladies can sew clothes for money and unconventional ones can have a hat shop like Elizabeth in "Upstairs, Downstairs"). The hardest thing has been giving up the racial mixture I'm used to. However, I've been dealing a lot more with class issues, who can know whom, who can marry whom, who can be friends that sort of thing. I have a London, I have a rural area, and I have a village so I can have variety. Well, I just wanted to thank you for this fabulous idea. I don't even care about my other neighborhoods anymore I love playing this one so much. |
I leaxrn the game from my brother last year.He taught me the mechanics and procedures on how to play the game.I find it very interesting and exciting to play.
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You could always make a big family and let the kids starve and get taken away by the social worker. And the bills could pile up and everyone could get sick. It might be fun to have some families live on the "wrong side of the tracks" and it might develop into a really interesting story line.
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I've always found, that when stuck in my game, being boring, I always go vanilla. Perhaps it's just me, but I've found that with my CC, I focus more on the appearance of the sims than on storylines.
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This is really helpful!!!
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I use the Random Stuff generator, It's helped a lot because I get combinations that I would never use.
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I like to go through the catalog for items I've never used before, and then I center the entire family around it. It makes for some interestingly decorated houses, that's for sure.
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I always have stories going on in my head, so I don't really get bored with the game. It's more like the game is the vehicle for the stories rather than being the means and end unto itself.
Autonomous sim behavior does help to drive the stories, at least for me. For example, in my largest neighborhood that I play most frequently, there are these two men who for whatever reason have never gotten along/liked each other. I guess they have almost diametrically opposed interests, so any conversations they have with each other end with negative points. Their innate dislike has built to epic rivalry, at least in my head, to the point they are in a vicious cycle of "keeping up with the Joneses" and deliberately doing things to provoke jealousy or further negativity. It doesn't help they live right across the street from each other, and their wives get along swimmingly. Look for these little sparks of unexpected interactions, positive or negative, and form a story around them. Until I bore myself with my own stories, I'll keep enjoying the game. I've just started actual "storytelling" with the game, and that's very exciting, too. Maybe at some point I'd also like to make a film with it. I think even if you're bored with the game itself, either of these options add both a technical challenge and a creative challenge that may be right up your alley. |
Just wondering, what hacks make your sims lives harder? I want them!!!
:D |
sassy1010101, check out these threads: Let the Cruelty Begin and cheating for more realism.
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Thanks! I am going to have fun with those!
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Right now I am doing the 'Poor-Happy Family'
The family is poor, lives in a small house, they just got out of college and live a happy life hiking every morning and finding jobs. I'd also like to make another family and test how far the male will go with cheating on his wife without being caught... Just a thing I've always wanted to do. /evil face/ Valerie  |
Well, I like to make one sim marry another, have +100 relationship w/ eachother, stuff like that. Then have them cheat w/ another sim, and when they have been cheating w/o getting caught, have them cheat on THAT sim, then cheat on THAT one, so on so on so on, see how many I can get before I get caught by 1 person. I be sure I go out with each person a lot, keep the relationship stable, stuff like that. So it is soooo fun!!
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Im going to try:
One or more hot romance sims living in a house. Try to break up as many marriages as you can! Thank you in advance for the fun I am about to have Maybe Ill make it into a story... |
Another interesting idea I saw was in the Apple Valley blog - the blogger assigns additional traits to her sims aside from the Maxis-made personality (borrowing from the sims 3 idea).
So take for example, Jane Smith Sim has the ff additional traits : Favorite Color: Yellow, T1: Fat, T2: Worry Wart, T3: Traveler. So, she ends up as an over-weight sim who worries constantly about everything, wears yellow clothes, decorates everything bright yellow, and travels a lot to exotic places ... the story kinda writes itself following from these additional traits. I find it super fascinating and that should make playing a sim even more interesting. |
This really helped for me. Before i had that get jobs - get married - have kids and so on routine. Now the game is much more interesting. :square:
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Randomise aspirations, personalities and just break your usual mode of playing. Get John together with Jane at the same time as being gay(no offense to anyone) with Bob etc. It makes great gameplay and can end up with some good story telling results.
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Because all of my families are drama-free (just as I prefer), I choose from among my dozens of saved neighborhoods when I am bored with one. As a consequence, though, none of my families have reached beyond the 4th generation; there are simply too many of them to keep track of!
What keeps the game really interesting to me is the genetics. The game is the perfect engine to run some simple Mendelian genetics experiments  . |
Free will ON, and letting all my sims hook up via ACR. Have some really interesting couples going!
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I found that when I got over the urge to custom-create and control everything, then the game got a whole lot more interesting.
Now, when I create a Sim, it's always done in CAS. (I only use BodyShop to recolor stuff.) CAS chooses their gender (unless I specifically need one or the other, like for a challenge) and their appearance. I do not allow myself to alter the appearance I get except for their clothing, hairstyle and, if they're female, their makeup. (I do have face template replacements that moderate the extreme ape faces, but I still get ape-y faces quite often.) Their aspiration, personality points, and turn-ons/offs are all generated with an online integer generator. Once generated, I do not make any plans for my Sims, except in the most general of terms. (Like for instance, based on the Sim's personality and sometimes on the clothes he/she generates in, I'll decide that a new Sim is going to be a farmer and live off the land.) Otherwise, I play them strictly according to the LTW and wants/fears they roll; I do my best to fulfill their wants and it usually takes me in interesting directions. If a Sim wants a mate or rolls an LTW that requires children, I let them pick their mate, not me. I send them to a community lot and let 'em scope the room. If no one there appeals, it's off to another lot. Repeat as necessary. Whoever my Sim wants, my Sim gets, even if I think he/she is the ugliest thing ever to walk the SimEarth. As it turns out, I've gotten some fun couples and surprisingly awesome-looking children this way, so I think in some ways the Sim knows best. Or, sometimes ACR happens, since I have that. But usually it's the "scope room" thing for me. But basically, when I first started playing, I would have all these plans for the Sims I created or who were born in game, and I would make the Sim live that life, their own wants and such be damned. That got old really quickly. Plus, usually, I pretty much only ever created Knowledge or Family Sims. By playing more randomly, I discovered the virtues of the other aspirations, and it made the game a lot more fun. ...Though I confess that I still can't stand the Pleasure aspiration, and I further confess that sometimes, when a Sim rolls that aspiration, I'll roll again. |
These ideas will come in handy!
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I must be backwards. I create so much drama between my sims that for ME, playing the normal "get married, work at job, have kids, etc" stuff breaks up the monotony of drama. xD
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Right now I have one going where one of my female sims is in love with a married man. Natasha Una in Desiderata Valley. Everyone in the town hates her right now,lol. I made her go on vacation to Twikki Island, and she teleported her love to her. Now she is expecting, what to do? lol. I would like to actually make her break an engagement with another man, leave town, and start over with her baby. But she wants to live on her vac home on Twikki Island. Does anyone know if you get pregnant on vacation, does the baby leave with you or is it like UNI and it gets stuck?
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Your Sim can get pregnant on vacation, but the pregnancy won't advance there. She'll give birth at home.
ETA: Oops. I went off-topic. When my multi-generational game starts to feel like I'm just counting days instead of enjoying each family's story, I incorporate a mini-challenge or set a high-level goal for the "dull" families. |
Ha, thanks Mangaroo. I also tried the Sims Island Challenge, all of my sims hate each other. I don't seem to have a lot of luck getting couples together.
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What I like to do is create some story lines and then play them for a while. Like right now, I had two extremly rich sims that lived in a huge house and had lots of money. They were happily married and expecting their first child. Then I burned down their house and their money too(there aren't banks in the sims 2) and now they're completly broke and will soon have a baby to look after. Now they're on a mission to restore their family's former glory. Stuff like that. i think its fun.
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My custom hood is mostly romance sims- I only have the base game and that is my favorite aspiration. I have many married romance couples- totally keeps drama going. It really lends itself to scandals well I don't even have to manipulate much to get something horrible going. A lot of the times I'll marry a family and romance sims. Most of my sims are very attractive romance sims.
But I usually I only use the same zodiac signs, I wish I could find a chart like the sims 1 had for which signs get along best and worst. ETA- I also create a lot of offbeat families, like how the Goths were the Addams Family of their hood, I make at least one random Victorian themed family to not fit in. The sim in my avatar is one of two random Victorian twin sisters I have creeping out the sims in my hood. |
KittyKuba- Snooty Sims has a zodiac compatibility chart here
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I got a hacked object called The Mind Control Mirror. It lets me select other sims and control them. It also lets me look at who their friends are, their jobs and if anything is in their inventory. I have my sims put their old stuff in their inventory. When they get a new sofa, telescope, or other upgrades, the old stuff goes in their inventory. So, when they go visiting, my sims get to shop by looking in the inventories of the visitors. Most of the townies don't have anything in their inventory until they get a move in proposal. If I take something for my sims, I have to add something. That's where all the extra trees, shrubs, lamps and stuff from downloaded houses go.
I was using the mirror to find out which sims were friends with Michelle Gibson because one of my sims really liked her when they met on a community lot. But I hadn't seen her in a long time. Found another sim who knew Michelle, so my sim befriended her, invited her over, and the next day they were best friends and Michelle got to move in. This makes it more fun to search out specific friends than the hacks that let you teleport anyone in the hood to your house. Other times, I use the Mirror at community lots I made to see which romance sims haven't fulfilled their woohoo wants and what their turn ons are. Then my sims keep their "targets" occupied until they are ready. I created a woohoo club downtown that is so much fun. I also have a club in the woods, and a lovers lodge, and a rendezvous park. So far, I never run out of things to do. |
I like to make a checklist for myself and try to get things accomplished that way. I go by family and it ends up giving me a whole lot to do with my game.
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I am really starting to get into home building. I started a sim in college last night, and I plan on seeing what I can do in college, then when he grows up I'm gonna run a business, make some servos, and eventually marry him to a plantsim good witch
 I also want to get a butler. Yeah, they're cocky, but they have the skills to back it up :p |
when the basic scenarios get a bit dull, i have a mini story i play out in my mind and it works out okay for me.
i create a female character, have her fall in love and have a baby with a male sim, kill the guy one way or the other, then repeat the whole cycle to see how many kids your sim can have. the most ive ever had were 8 biological kids, a step child, and a grandchild (there was one more baby on the way but the sim died of hunger). o and have all of the children age except the mom. elixir of life usually does the trick for me. |
Quote: Originally posted by Tenielle
Thankyou~! Thankyou! |
I've started a skunk farm. Every time one comes by, I pause and use moveObjects to trap it and add it to my skunk pen
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Quote: Originally posted by HystericalParoxysm
I never created for TS1 or 2 and I have no experience whatsoever with programming. But I was wondering... is there any "Don't Panic! Start Here!"-like tutorial for TS3? Where can I find it? Do someone like me - no programming skills - stand a chance at doing any CC for The Sims 3? EDIT: This might not be the perfect forum to place this question... (since it's a thread at TS2 category. My bad. I'm still interested in this Don't Panic version for TS3, so if anyone knows, please send me a private message or open a thread in the approppriate section or something) |
jurocha, this is definitely not the proper forum for TS3 questions or Create questions. Please check the Create menu in the navigation bar at the top of your screen.
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Prosperity style playing makes my game much more interesting. Read more about it here.
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I recently went into Strangetown and checked everyone's memories, bios and photos and decided to do something with Olive Spector and Nervous Subject. Nervous lived with the Beakers (who I plan to torture in some fun way in the near future, for subjecting Nervous to all of those experiments) so I got the Tombstone of L&D and made him a toddler again and moved him in with Olive so he could have a second chance at a better life. My plan has been to have him grow up well, with many skills....maxed...if possible...a private school student as well as going off to college. I've been doing the same with Ophelia when I have the time. What I've accomplished is his skills over half full...growing up well twice (walking, talking and potty trained and an A+ student)...he's a private school student and his hobby is games. He also adopted the stray...Alegra. I'm not sure what I'll do with him after college. This has been fun and he's my favorite sim at the moment. I've taken many pictures but have never uploaded anything so I don't know if I'll do that. Thanks to HP for this topic...lots of great suggestions. Oh, I amost forgot...I made Olive a zombie. She froze accidentally during a snowstorm so I had Ophelia pay Grim ...very little....which he did not appreciate
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I don't know why, but I always have more fun building the houses and creating the interior of them (I'd download them onto the site, but I don't have any internet for my gaming computer).
The gameplay is a bore for me though -- I always make their lives perfect by using maxmotives and kaching to pay their bills. Maybe I'll forget about that and take a risk. |
Now I am really getting into playing the sims 2. One day, I was just so bored out of my mind, I said, hey why not just play the sims 2 for a little while. And now, it's just as much fun as when I first started playing.
I've gotten into playing supernaturals latley namely, good witches. They are so much fun, they have little spells that let them have special abilities, and they can summon things, and have poitions, and go to a secret lot just for the kind of witch they are (which is goregous btw) there are two lots, one for evil witches and one for good witches. So far, I've only been to the one for good witches, because that's all I've really played. |
Quote: Originally posted by Annababy
I think these are great ideas! I never make my sims cheat on each other*. I feel so bad! But maybe if that's the point of the neighborhood and everybody's doing it.. haha sounds fun. The generation thing is also really cool and interesting, but I definetly don't have the patience for that! Plus I dont really like "period" clothes. I mean they are very well done and detailed but they just don't do anything for me.well obviously romance sims, but not in a living together or family environment |
You know I used to do theme neighborhoods, I might get back into that again. I had 3 neighborhoods. One was retroville all houses were from a time period in the past, and all objects, and sims clothing in that household refelected that time period. I started with 1900's and went all the way to 1980's. That was a really fun neighborhood to play. And my second neighborhood was called hollywood. It had only celeberity sims downloaded from mts living in mansions. My third neighborhood was sci-fi. with a moon neighborhood terrain, for lots and nieghborhood and all aliens downloaded from various sites, or some that I made myself.
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What's kept me interested over the past year is a custom neighbourhood with no pre-built houses or lots at all. I started with 4 families, each with their own distinct genetics. The thing is that each 'tribe' was made up of relatives only, no spouses etc. It was fun to see who would pair up from different tribes and produce children.
The houses started very basic and I played very 'gamey'. They were simple tribal people, with sheds for sleeping and showering in. I now have streets full of nice houses that I would love to live in, and around 100 sims that I play in rotation, using Seasons to keep lots close to each other in time (no getting more than one season ahead of the rest). Its been a lot of fun building the houses and occasionally adding community lots. Its amazing how the neighbourhood has built up over time. I'm now onto the second generation born in-game across several families, trying to keep to a 2-child-max rule to keep things getting out of hand. The interbreeding has been interesting, especially with some of the strange 'alien' characters I introduced with special skintones etc. Now I find myself setting challenges, like making my own custom 'university' by dumping most of the neighbourhood's teens and career rewards (skill boosters) on one lot. I also want to set up some sort of palace/governor's mansion. I also made my own Nightlife sub-hood for tropical holidays. Meanwhile Bobba Fett kills off the unwanted NPC's using firebombs and a custom sword object. I have Pets and Seasons but have yet to really try self-sufficient farming or pet careers. I love the different possibilities of this game |
I've been focusing on my born in game "Bloom-babies" and seeing how they turn out...I'm on my 3rd generation and they are taking over the neighborhood. Now I'm looking at having some of my households engage in challenges. I don't really have to *try* to keep myself interested because there is so much "material" available in daily life that I'll just be going about my day and it'll hit me that I want to try something or build a specific house...or something. And if I hit an uncreative point, there's always the challenges here on MTS.
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I've been playing with very few cheats. To develop possible mates for my booming legacy I create families of 6-8, leave the funds at 20,000 and try to make them prosperous. And try to make the family have more babies. It gets crazy. I also try to make sure all teens have their first loves, kisses etc., without cheating. I try to get them married off and expecting without cheating or let them have babies out of wedlock but be engaged to someone else. I look to their behaviors for a lot of inspiration- who's attracted to who, who's mean and who's incapable of studying.
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This seems stupid, but I take my elder sims and move them into a huge house with excersise equipment and skill-building furniture, and I just have them read and paint with motivedecay off. Until they die. I hate playing elder sims once their kids have gone off to college. They're so boring and so are their jobs, and it's hard to have affairs with other elders (makes me sick.)
Another thing I like to do when I get sick of regular playing is I make little movies or music videos. They usually turn out really stupid since I don't download alot of music, but it's fun to learn about new camera techniques. And also, if you have alot of EP's, making a wereworf-vamp-zombie-witch-plantsim. You don't have to include the vampire since they're really hard to play when they're also plantsims. (Since one of the plantsim needs is Sunlight, and vampires needs go down in sunlight. So use lamps )
Quote: Originally posted by obsessedj3e
Lol that's hilarious Imagine all those skunks sniffing around... |
u no i have all these EPs on my lappie yet it seems when i play the sims i dont actually 'use' the other EPs! thnx for the suggestions!
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I would like to share an idea:
I loved the witches from AL!! Inspired by the tv show Wizards of Waverly Place, I had a witch marry a non-witch and had the witch turn their children into witches and wizards when they were teenagers. For their house, I lowered the ground beneath their house to make a secret place with all the witch stuff like the glowing witch lamps and chairs and shelves with all the weird ornaments on it. There are no stairs or anything to get into that place. the only way is by magvestium.. I also made all of them wear normal clothes so they looked like normal people, except for their skin. I made the teenagers do stuff like making the waiter at the restaurant fatter. Its really freaky but funny. I had LOADS of fun playing that family. |
Sometimes when I'm bored, I make a family with two completely different dogs/cats (so maybe a skinny black male cat and a really fat female with multicoloured fur), and then breed them.
You end up with loads of really funny animals on your lot! |
You are absoulutley right on stop cheating. It is so fun without money cheats. When you use money cheats its boring because you can get them what they want in a snap and also you end up giving them a gianormous house with like 100 rooms they dont use. :p
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Thanks for the suggestions! I get bored playing really easily (especially since I used cheats). Now I've been browsing around and I've started playing some challenges and they're actually pretty fun.
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Quote: Originally posted by obsessedj3e
OMG, I want a skunk farm now. XD But then I'm the type of weird person who wondered if you could adopt a pet skunk if you got the relationship high enough. XD |
Im back at sims 2! lol
Im starting off in a fresh new neighborhood and I came up with an idea to have 1 interesting fact for each sim. (not the townies though) This suggestion is not new, but my ideas I've thought of myself. Heres a few that Im using that you can use! -Computer Phobia- dont buy a computer if that sim is in the household! -Obsessed with fruits- My sim has this fact and she named her daughter Berrie (berry). She also has cherry prints on her dress and she owns fruit trees lol -Favorite Color- decorate your sims home with a color -Symmetrical Freak- this sims house must be symmetrical! eep kinda hard lol Theres others but I dont remember them now lol.. Hope this helps though. |
I do the color themes in my game a lot. I have one sim that likes white and yellow. So her house is yellow and white, with a white fence. Got her a yellow car. The inside on the first floor has a pale pinkish rose color accented with yellow. On the second floor there is a lot of yellow on the walls. I used a light, almost white wood floors for each level. The third floor, where the master bath and master bedroom are, is where I used my favorite yellow walls, paintings of yellow flowers, and yellow flowers in white pots for decor.
What I like about color themes is doing them a little at a time. So I never decorate the entire house at once, because if I find some new cc, then it takes more work and is more costly do undo earlier decorations. So, I add to certain rooms each visit. But if something major happens, then I might remodel an entire floor, or a good portion of the house on small lots. It helps keep the game fresh so I don't have to visit a bunch of lots just because I got new cc. I just wait until I visit their house to look around to see what I can add or change. Then I have some sims that wear all black with very little of other colors. I usually make their homes with darker and richer colors and no pastels. I even have themes when I am building houses. One time I made a few houses that I used greenhouse walls for the garage. I try to mix up the neighborhood so I don't have identical houses right next to each other. And when I do make similar houses, I will change it so that the gardens are on different parts of the lot, the front doors are different, the upstairs balcony is in a different location, if they have one, and some may have flat roofs or custom roofs. None of my houses are exactly like another, even if I am making houses with similar features. I made a bunch of split-level houses once but only two of my families are living in them. The rest are in the houses bin. Sometimes I even try to make a game of trying to remember what the house is like before I go in and play. There are only a handful of houses I know well. Probably less than that. Some I only remember the main floor layout. I went to a house the other day and was looking at the second floor, wondering why I never gave them a bed. Maybe I was planning to remodel with some custom cc. So, I put a bed in the empty room with night stands and a dresser that were in one of the sims' inventory. Later, when I was looking to see where the telescope was pointing because a sim rolled that want, I hit the page up key one too many times and discovered the third floor, with the bedroom already fixed up. Oops. But it does keep the game interesting seeing so many different types of houses and gardens made in ways I like them. |
I recently got bored with my game, doing the whole 'happy family' routine. So I decided to play a neighbourhood I've barely played, which was Strangetown. I started with the Singles family, and it's definatly not boring.
I refused to use any cheats, cheats for money, cheats to make friends etc. I gave all four sims a makeover then got them jobs, I've never had so many chance cards at once! Each sims has had at least 2 chance cards each, I've made them change jobs frequently while I waiting for the right one to come up. All of them have turned out badly, either they lost money or a skill point. Even one sim (which was a fortune sim) lost their job over a chance card, and they went into aspiration failure, which I never had before. It's definatly kept things interesting, I'm off to play them right now. |
I decided to start a variation of the Prosperity challenge. Created a new, clean neighborhood with new default faces and names. Rolled dice to determine how many families I would start with, and how many people in each family, etc. Kept some of my cheats/hacks because they make the game more fun to me but used dice to determine aspirations and personality in my original sims and in their kids.
The idea was to use randomness to reduce my micro-managing and it's working (a bit). Decided to use the long term want to determine what career to follow, and then to have them only access the career if it is in the paper or the computer (not using the hack that would allow them to pick anyone they wanted) - but... I have a few custom careers that don't seem to ever show up in LTW. So they never get used, and everyone seems to be in the same few careers (which gets boring and is why I downloaded the custom ones). But if they follow a custom career there is no chance of achieving permanent platinum. What to do, what to do? |
You can pick a custom career when the sim's LTW is not related with a career.
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True. And they'll go platinum anyway when they're close to being an elder. Provided that you played them from infancy. When the bar of life happiness (I think it's called that way in English) becomes full, their aspiration turns to permanent platinum.
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"Lifetime Aspiration Meter", Babahara.
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Very helpful!
Thank you for such awesome tips. I've never thought about some of the things you've mentioned. |
another way is to get Custom content and make your sims like you in real life you know Realistic homes, cars ETC...
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It would be so cool to build a neighborhood with one main neighborhood, with whatever your favorite type of supernatural is, and then shopping districts/downtowns with all kinds of supernaturals. Say your favorite is wizards (warlocks, the game calls them). So you make a place called "Wizard Crossing". And then you make a downtown called "Vampire City" or whatever.
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Hm... Its slightly already done, but making sims staying IN their category ( example- Human sims staying in a seprate neighborhood ,away from Warlocks/Vampires, etc...)
Is kinda impossible. Maybe if a Hacker/Modder can make the Global Gamemod. |
Yeah, I guess. But all your sims would be LIVING in the same place, right?
And the lots would kind of fit a theme. So wizards would be shopping at a vampire shop. Maybe they want to shop at a vampire shop, right? |
True, but still....Actually, lets hope this inspires game modders!
:DI can understand, yeah, maybe they do wanna shop at a vampire shop. |
Wow! I had never seriously thought of making a brand new neighborhood.
It would be sooo much fun too; making brand new characters, building houses to your liking, writing their stories....What a great idea! I also think SamanthaSSJ's idea of randomizing certain aspects is brilliant. Even if I don't set out to do so, I always end up making the picture perfect family...and as many of you may know, that can get real boring, real fast. I've stopped using the money cheats, seeing as it makes everything way too easy. For the first time, I got one of my male Sims to the top of his career! He even got a 55k simoleon bonus. :D I'm still guilty of using the boolProp cheat, but I'm trying to cut that out too. I think I've let only one couple age naturally...isn't that terrible? It's just that I always get so impatient. xP Anyways, thanks for all the ideas, guys! They're fantastic! I'm gonna go browse the internet for town name ideas. ;D |
"I'm gonna go browse the internet for town name ideas."
There is a thread about neighborhood names here, velvetsun. |
Randomness can be fun! As I posted above I was annoyed that my sims LTW were always the standard career wants and never the new careers I had downloaded. But I didn't want to just pick a career because then I would end up with the same stuff I always pick. So I went back to the dice. I made a list of all the careers my game has - the standard ones and the custom in alphabetical order. Divided the list into groups of 6 and numbered each group. I have 4 groups of 6 and 1 group of 5.
When they become teens and I select their aspirations (with dice) I also select their futue career. So I roll 2 dice - the first one is the group number and the second is the career in that group. Obviously if I roll a 6 for the group I just re-roll. I also use the Sim Blender to reroll their LTW up to 3 times to try to get a non-career LTW. If I don't succeed, oh well maybe they won't have a perfect platinum life. It's about time I tried something new. |
Sims don't get a LTW about a custom career. Even with Uni installed you'll need a mod to get a LTW about an Uni career.
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Another idea for keeping the game interesting: DON`T BUY YOUR SIMS ANYTHING if you can help it. Let them buy their OWN stuff at other Sims` stores. You never know WHAT they might come home with. If they come home with too much of something, they can give it away as gifts. Open for Business is one of my favorite expansions.
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Here's another thing I do a lot to keep my game interesting. In rl, you can go to garage sales, yard sales and whatever to pick through stuff just for fun. So, in the same way, I never let my sims throw anything out, I just stash the old stuff in their inventory. The fun part comes in deciding who gets the old items.
In order to be considered for something in a sims' inventory, the other sim has to know and be friends with the sim that has an item. This also goes for stuff like produce since I try to have my sims with large lots grow more of something than what they need. I let a few families grow extra tomatoes. But they have very few apple trees. It really gets involved keeping track of who has extra stuff and getting them to make friends with different sims that have stuff they need. I even let them trade decorative trees. I hate having my lots full of trees so I can't see my sims move about in the house or in their yards. But, my hood is a rural hood, so they all have to have gardens and be garden club members. Just before the garden club is called to request the inspection, I pull a bunch of trees out of their inventory and arrange them carefully. When the inspection is done, I have the sims give the extra trees to friends. Most of my sims have trees in inventory that are only used to boost their inspection scores. Of course, I can't find my sims during the inspection because of all the darn trees blocking my view. But they always pass inspection and get a lot of money. Hehehe. However, I don't allow my sims to make wishes from the well. Not with all the mods available that make it so you don't have to wonder if the well will give something good or bad. One time a well dropped these hideous creatures when my sim wanted friends. That was the last time one of my sims wished for anything from a garden club well. |
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Thanks for the heads up! I actually picked a name already, but it's not written in stone or anything. Who knows? I might just find something better. |
"Thanks for the heads up!"
You`re welcome! |
I let my sims start with close-to-nill comforts [must have phone at home] and an artshop that sells paintings, basically nothing but blank walls with pictures from the buy-catalogue stuck on them for sale.
If you don't mind roughing it for a couple of days, and track carefully which sims gets along well with which customer, it becomes a nice gravy-train. (Roughing it means communal shower, cheap toilet and beds and no food but pizza, and don't even ask about walls other than to stick the toiletries on. Life on a 2*2 campsite with no amenities but cold running water. ) It is not that hard to get 6 customer stars [May I Help You?], and you sell the shop back for an 8K gain, and buy it back again at the bottom-price. Last time I did that this basic ploy my 3 sims got a jolly nice fortune in very little time. They are now 6 days into their sim-life, and have a family-fortune of 120K or so. kachin, carreers or even jobs? That is so totally medieval. :D |
Quote: Originally posted by Mollypog
This post, about a year ago, is exactly what I do! I am sure the stories stared with the game, but now, it's funny...I'm not sure what comes first...the story or the game action! Sometimes, I make the Sims do exactly what I need for a photo...or I will take a really cool photo and then work it into the story. Either way, my mind is working on the 'big picture' the whole time I am playing. I have gotten bored...or real life keeps me from playing sometimes, but I LOVE this game. I love the graphics, the CC, the concept and the outlet it gives me creatively as well. Don't know what I would do without my Sims!!! :lovestruc |
Old cat lady is win.
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Suggestion for University EP
I actually just came up with this while I was plotting out my 'hood for the Prosperity is Random challenge by SamanthaSSJ.
If you have Uni and you're sick of the studying and getting into university free and with Fs, try this (I'm not sure if there's a mod for this or not): Before the happy little teen heads naively off to university, ding their household funds for a specified amount of 'tuition' for at minimum the first semester of university. I calculated mine at 2000$/semester, based on the approximation of how much my real-life uni costs me a year (if you want it harder - make it more! Want it more accessible? Make it less!). A prospective uni student's earnings at their job - and any scholarship money they may have earned - can go towards that initial 2000 and subsequent semesters' tuition. Then, at the start of every semester, subtract the next payment (grant money counts) - don't have the cash? Well, in real life, you don't pay the tuition, you don't go to class. They must drop out of university. Example: John Smith (teen) wants to go to university and study biology, which will cost him 2000 a semester. His family is a low-income household (less than 2000 in the family funds). He has a part-time job that has made him earn a total of 900 simoleons (so 2000-900=1100 left to pay). He has also earned 750 in scholarship money (1100-750=350). Now you have two choices for John (or three, if you choose to implement some sort of student-loan system): 1. No university for you! Your family can't help (if they have less than 350) / won't help (if they have more than 350). 2. Subtract 350 from the family funds and send little Johnny to work hard, study hard and become a fabulously rich doctor! * 3. This would come into play IF you chose to make some sort of student-loan system. Send John to university, but he's now 350 in debt to the Repo-Man Loans Agency. Any further loans on his tuition are accumulated and must begin to be paid off after graduation (a real realist? Charge 'im interest after grad - the student loans where I study, any way, don't start accumulating interest until after studies are complete). Keep in mind that while in university, students still have bills to pay - it might keep it slightly more interesting to play, now that they have a heavier load to bear. Studying hard might make the load easier, since they get more grant money, but it won't do much for their social life! EDIT: I've discovered that this is apparently something like the University portion of the Build-a-City challenge. I'm not as smart as I thought was,  . |
Who else out there only has the base game?
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LOL, I was going to install just base game on my laptop with zero cc just for funs and distractions at university - but it's got a compatibility issue with Vista. Thinking back, it probably has a patch...
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When I get bored I download new Custom Content *lol* or I make a new neighborhood with a theme. I have a neighborhood full of vampires. A neighborhood full of young swingers. A neighborhood that's like Japan with pagodas and only japanese people. I have a Hollywood, where everyone is super glam and all of them are money sims. I also have an interracial neighborhood where EVERY couple is interracial somehow. I also like to make gay couples every now and then, just for a different family feel, I guess.
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