Fav neighbourhood?
 

What's your fav neighbourhood that IS NOT PLEASANTVIEW!!!
That's because I know 99% of people only play that hood

You can also mention the subhoods such as the Uni campuses, Travel locations, downtown, bluewater village, etc.

And you can mention custom hoods

My "The Beginning of Pleasantview" hood. https://modthesims.info/download.php?t=521653
My Old Town hood. https://modthesims.info/download.php?t=522506
Both of them hold about the same place in my hart.

I like the prebuilt Downtown with its unique, detailed commlots and compact yet fully featured residential houses with more than one room, car space, greenery and a foundation.

Omg playing pleasantview like that is such a fun idea

I love downtown yet I hate how empty of sims it is...as in there's many houses yet they are not occupied

My own hood. It's been a WIP for a while now based on a map called channelwood I think.

No pre-made lots, no pre-made sims. All my own WIP.

I thought it would be a 'good idea'.

I've also started on the downtown city.

What was I thinking?

There's a simple solution to that! This is our Downtown Veronaville!


With a lively young population, it's a centre of gay culture. In addition to the downtown residents, lots of visitors come in daily, and nightly from the surrounding neighbourhoods, including old Veronaville itself. They come for the shopping, the restaurants, the culture, the sport, and the wildest nightlife this side of Saturn! Empty of Sims it certainly ain't!!

If you want to move here you'd better be quick. There are currently only four empty properties in the whole downtown area. Well, five if you include the House of Fallen Trees. But teenage downtown resident Ravi Bertino, illegitimate son of the late Jon Smith Tricou, and therefore a member of the family who once lived there, says wild horses couldn't persuade him to spend even one night in that house. "There be ghaisties there," he says. Ravi lives nearby with his boyfriend Jack Gill in a little house at 31 Mendoza Lane. He says that's quite near enough to the House of Fallen Trees!

In addition to all the residents, and the visitors, there are of course the Downtownies (well those of them who haven't become playable) a fascinating group of Sims, well worth meeting!


My favourite neighbourhood? Our Veronaville of course, including this exciting downtown, and the sub-hoods of Bluewater and Monopolis (d_dgjdhh's Monopoly Game Town). At the moment I am playing Pleasantview, but at heart I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Veronavillian through and through!

My forecast for the upcoming big (soccer) match: Veronaville All-Stars 8 : Pleasantview Plodders 1!

Strangetown, no question. I love the middle-of-nowhere aesthetic. There's very little familial drama, just a bunch of weirdos living in the desert. I always kinda wished I could have grown up in a family like the Curious/Smith family, they just seem so wholesome to be around with all their eccentricities.

As a fun bonus, everyone there is good looking too

You should give "The Beginning of Strangetown" a try. https://modthesims.info/download.php?t=522185

RIP, Drama Acres, I still love you so!

Widespot and Strangetown.

Don't ask me to only have one favorite. Not everything ranks hierarchically. Actually hardly anything does.

Ah! Drama Acres! My favourite neighbourhood that I never played -- never visited. I miss your regular posts about life there. It seemed so full of fascinating characters that you brought to life in your posts. Characters like Pigeon Hawkins and Mary Munny, who came alive in your posts like real people that I would love to meet. You and they helped me to realise how complex and multi-faceted TS2 Sims can be. If you ever fancy writing "The Illustrated Story of Drama Acres", it's a book I'd love to read -- and I don't think I'd be the only one.

Tinseltown and Thalia, along with the medieval town of Arundel.

I miss them so much! (I promise I'll rescue you pixels! It won't be long now!..)

Not being able to play your game is so damn frustrating, especially when it is in a time of stress and chaos.

Strangetown, of course, of course, of course - when it comes to vanilla hoods.

I honestly loved playing Drama Acres - and some of the other custom hoods too.

But in the end, my own hoods that I play, on my own, with my own sims (and the bin sims, quite often) and my own lots, and still missing the one that vanished into space and the one I lost when my PC broke a couple of years ago.

Theoretically I could because I still have all those story albums - but the early pictures were so terrible I never will.

The thing about Drama Acres, the thing that made it so alive and chaotic and complex, was that I had no idea what I was doing. I intended Drama Acres as an experimental hood where I would really learn how the game works. And I did! I tried everything that occurred to me and saw things I wasn't prepared for. I started out with one idea and I built the hood around it. When I had a new idea I grafted it on. When I made a discovery I rolled with it. I was still adding EPs when I started. I didn't know whether young adults could get pregnant or not, wasn't patched, hadn't looked up custom content yet, hadn't added a single mod. I experimented wildly with faces in CAS, which is where my reputation for "ugly sims" and my enjoyment of distinctive features and base game templates came from.

It never will be - it never can be - that intense and filled with discovery again.

Emptied Pleasantview (what? I can't like that one?). For some reason I just really like the outlay of the terrain. Been using the OG version for several years as my story hood, and recently used an emptied version to shape up the town (fewer random buildings everywhere, cleaned-up buildings I no longer use, and no playables and their houses I don't want). Mine (new and old) have always looked different from the original outlay, because I've moved/deleted lots, built new ones, and changed up the NH deco.

Most of the time I've played my own hoods (and the kinda half-broken Pleasantview/storyhood, where I ignored all the original sims unless I badly needed a random walkby for a shoot). I tend to like template hoods with a minimum of sea water and good outlays of roads.

Out of the original hoods and their playables, I have a slight weakness for Strangetown, because I had a lot of fun playing with the Curious brothers back in the days. I kinda like Pleasantview as a whole too, but never really cared much for playing all the interwoven storylines. I'm the type who sees the prompts and goes to do something else (at one point I resurrected Darren's wife, and they had triplets - thinigs like that). I've used Veronaville as a test hood a few times, but that's pretty much it - I have absolutely no interest in those intrigues or sims. The three other OG hoods have seen some playing from time to time, but barely any in recent years.

I can't find PT 9 or Nervous Subject good looking lol.



Drama Acres died? Aww, the last I remember of it, it was still holding on. Do you have a backup?

Strangetown. Been my favorite town since I started playing Sims 2. I've always loved aliens and weirdness lol. Pleasantview is actually my second favorite lol, possibly tied with Riverblossom Hills.

The last time I played the main Hawkins house, a birthday party, the game crashed violently ten times during the same party. I played selected other houses till they met certain milestones - mostly babies growing to toddler so I could see how they looked - and then transferred it to an external harddrive to rest in peace. It has occurred to me that, since I finally got the graphics registry configured properly and the less-frequent random crashing in other hoods has almost entirely gone away, I might be able to put it back in; but I'd have to move the new N004 somewhere and I'm pretty sure a Hawkins family party will dissolve into pink soup even now, if I could get it running again. Maybe sometime when I have more spoons and I'm not stressed out by all the [redacted]. I'm certainly not throwing it away! It's like my wedding dress (or rather, the dress I was married in, which is not the same thing), tucked away, unusable but still sparking joy.

You don't have to find PT9 or Nervous good looking. You just have to not hold their looks against them. None of us need to look good to be worth looking at, thank goodness!

I am too a customhood enjoyer, but recently I started a new Strangetown. It always has been my favorite from the year since sims 2 was released. I love its aesthetics, its alien inhabitants, alien babies and the whole science vs military plot line. This post made me realize that I actually played Desiderata Valley much at all due to not having free time before accruing UC

I think Veronavilla has really grown on me in my Uberhood. On its own, it is still not to my taste but in combination with all the other families and each side gathering allies by marrying their siblings, cousins and kids off to other wealthy and upper class families has become real fun.
Belladonna Cove is close behind. I'm still struggling with Strangetown, La Fiesta Tech and Desiderata Valley. I'm neutral towards the rest of the Sims 2 premade hoods. I rarely, if ever, use the vacation ones, so not much to judge. I also added the recreated Sims Life and Pets stories hood to this uberhood but they are too new for me to yet say whether I love or hate them or don't feel anything particular about them.

My own hood Cherry Blossom Islands and its subhoods/other kingdoms is in a league of its own for me and can't be compared to the premade ones.

Okay, I am confused there. How is your wedding dress not the dress you were married in? Doesn't getting married in a dress make it your wedding dress?

In once sense, but saying "wedding dress" gives a wrong impression. I didn't buy a special dress to get married in; I put on on my nicest dress, we went downtown, got the license, and then since the JOP needed an appointment went across the street to a wedding chapel that took walk-ins under a Mexican restaurant and got married, then went to a fancier restaurant for lunch. Then we went home and called people to let them know we were married now. Best wedding I've ever attended. No stress, no bills, no fights! No gifts but we didn't need the kinds of gifts people give for weddings anyhow.

PT9 may have a bit of an "exotic" appearance (and killer cheek bones), but you seriously don't find Nervous's droopy puppy dog eyes adorable?

And we've found the Voice of the Smitten.

Anyway, my favorite 'hood... well, I've got two answers, depending on how the term "favorite" is taken:

• From a story standpoint: Strangetown. No contest. Something about the "middle of nowhere" aesthetic just appeals to me, and I've always had a thing for nonstandard Sims, including aliens.
• From a gameplay standpoint: My own custom 'hoods, though I seldom have more than one active at a time. Sometimes I'll use an emptied Maxis 'hood, sometimes I'll build one from scratch.

I think mine has to be my old hood, Lacuna Delta. I sometimes put it away for a time, but I keep coming back to it and it feels like home.

Nice picture catching the alien ship.

Right now my favourite is this Welsh university town I'm working on. I think it has the perfect balance of cozy and rural with a little bit of that nice gothic university architecture!

Nice! Reminds me of Aberystwyth, even has the railway!

Aberystwyth was the inspiration! Glad to see it came across - I almost went to Aberystwyth but chose against it because it felt too isolated for me, I’ve always had a fondness for it though.

I don't mean to alarm you, but there are some giant gnome monsters invading your neighbourhood!

That's Mr. Gnome's Wild Ride (courtesy of whoward69) !

It looks cool!

I never considered a rollercoaster for my hood to be honest, but it's an idea I might just send a sim to steal your giant gnome for.

I wasn't gonna post as I don't have a fav .. it's usually whichever one I'm currently playin that has my attention .. I'm a habitual restarted with throwaway hoods .. mostly Pleasantview and sometimes added Bluewater and Strangetown ... I've never really been able to getin playin custom hoods (not even the one(s) that I involved in creating in the HBG ... anyways, so currently I'm playin just Pleasantview and it's been interesting .. I think part of why I'm findin this one a bit more fun maybe than the others is that I've been sharin tidbits of what's goin on in the "What's goin on in your hood" thread .. :D

Whatever they are, they definitely ain't dwarfs!

On paper Veronaville, I love the stories, the characters & the architecture but it's quite limited in terms of families ties for a generational gameplay as everybody is related. I have to say even Riverblossom it's quite nice, last year I paired it up with Desiderata Valley and it worked very nicely. DV is quite boring on its own, I find the families quite vanilla as I'm not that interested in hobbies (it's like a secondary aspect for my gameplay purposes).

I guess my favourite is Strangetown though - I find it so iconic with the weird storylines and peculiar characters. I'm especially fond of the expanded Strangetowns by Prah and Chris_Newbie which include console sims and lots.

Each of the premade neighborhoods has its pros and cons, I think.

Pleasantview is probably my favorite overall as it's the most versatile. A good number of interconnected families who aren't all related. A lot of houses but ample room to place more houses and community lots. Meshes well with many architectural styles. Goes nicely with Downtown. I'm fond of the Pleasantview townies. I think a lot of the PV playables use the same face template, though, so in terms of genetics, there may not be a lot of diversity, and some of the Sims are quite boring.

Veronaville: I love the way it looks and the village feel of it. The characters, particularly the teens and kids, are really fun to play with. Probably some of my favorite Sims come from Veronaville. Too few families and way too many Capps. The community lots are awful. It's hard to build because of the flooding issue.

Strangetown: Great lore and back stories for the characters. This is probably my favorite in terms of story potential. I am a horror fan, so I enjoy the dark and supernatural aspects of it. Anything goes in Strangetown! The houses are unusual and I can generally work with them and make them playable. The Curious-Smith family just takes over after a while, though. Too few houses, and as I'm not a builder, I have a hard time finding houses that fit the desert vibe. Eventually, you run out of room in any case and have to add a subhood.

Riverblossom Hills: Really lovely, and a nice map for building on. I played it a lot when I first started playing. It's versatile and makes a nice historical hood, for instance, I like the country decor used throughout. The premades here don't really hold my interest, though, and I'm not fond of Plantsims.

Bluewater Village: A good mix of different kinds of families. I don't like for everyone to own a business, though. The houses are ridiculous, and the community lots are not my favorite either.

I've never played with the Apartment Life/Freetime hoods as I don't have those expansion packs. That also limits the hoods that I can download. I'm afraid I've missed out on some really interesting custom hoods that I've seen people playing on YouTube.

The biggest problem with Veronaville, even expanded Veronaville 2.0, is that it's self-limiting. You play through the present generation, and then what?

Riverblossom Hills doesn't mesh well with any other premade hood, because of the long winters and lots of snow. (I've never really gotten into it.)

Desiderata Valley, Bluewater Village and Belladonna Cove work better as subhoods, I find. There's not enough to them for main hoods.

Pleasantview works either way, though I still prefer the Sims 1 original (or a Sims2 remake of it).

On the whole I find Strangetown holds up best longterm, though the desert esthetic can get a bit monotonous. (Is it a coincidence that my two top favorites both feature alien meddling?) :D

Strangetown! I love the premade stories and the theme.

I think my favorite would have to be Pitstop Valley.

I first started playing it because I wanted a Maxis-like desert themed hood that wasn't Strangetown, (and admittedly didn't have a huge supernatural angle, I was getting tired of aliens and the like) and it really scratched that itch. It's such a small, complex neighborhood with just enough quirks and mystery to keep me entertained, plus the overall town story of a little desert hitch on the old Route 66 is timeless and ties all the stories together. I even had a sub theme of the town trying to pull together a resurgence, using tax funds and such to build up some of the abandoned areas and old construction sites: it gives you the seeds to grow the town and feel like it's changing because of your sims. Every family feels well thought out and unique. A secret agent hunting for her assassination target, a mother daughter duo running the town tavern, a Strangetown reference with Tristian Legend, two guys in a radio station growing "special plants" in the basement... it really feels cheeky and like it easily could have been a Maxis hood in an alternate release.

I like the charm and quirkiness of all the original Maxis neighborhoods, but Riverblossom Hills and Veronaville are my favorite premade neighborhoods. Widespot and Shady Shores are my go-tos for custom neighborhoods.

Strangetown -- but starting with a custom hood that is set before that time, so I can make the Sims more, um, believable? bizarre? And then attach the desert hood Sedona (4 men preg by aliens). And a custom college hood where all the students are ZOMBIES - with the appropriate personalities (and all the NPCs spawn as zombies too). I have dozens of PT's, so I switch them out and get lots of alien babies!
Never liked Veronaville, or playing apartments.