So Emma Blackery made this video where she observes her self-Sim's autonomous behaviour for 24 Sim hours and then reenacts it exactly in her real house, in her real life.
Spoiler alert: it didn't work very well.


But that's not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about how long a Sim day should be.
If you're one of those players who likes a good bit of realism in their game, perhaps you will want your Sims to go to bed and get out of bed at certain times. Or maybe you're tired of clubs only being open for about 10 minutes. Or maybe you think walking downstairs shouldn't take 27 minutes (it shouldn't.)

So that brings me to changing the timescale of the game. It's perfectly possible, using NRaas Relativity, but doing it raises a bunch of questions. What will you do with the extra time? Won't it make certain actions way too long or way too short? Won't it throw the entire game's balance off? Will it require an entirely different way to play?
I personally haven't done much besides slowing down certain parts of the day where needed - I've slowed down the late evening and early night on weekend days, for clubbing, but that's it. So I don't know how it exactly affects gameplay.

Say that when a Sim eats, it takes 30 minutes. Will a Sim still eat for 30 minutes when the day is twice as long? And if a Sim sleeps for 8 hours, will the Sim still sleep for 8 hours? Does need decay and need gain scale? And is there any particular benefit to making the days longer? Sims won't take as long to move around and get certain things done, which is great for realism, but is it really that useful?

And of course, the big question: how long should a Sim day be, then? The default is 24 minutes. How about 30, then? 48? An hour? 72 minutes, even?

For some interactions the duration is fixed, so it will still take the same time to complete them. (Although it seems as though it's taking longer, due to the time adjustment.) But ones that have a gradual effect can be speeded up. You can play with the settings to adjust how it affects motives and skills.

And I don't know how "useful" it is to have time flowing at slightly less than half speed, but I prefer it. I wouldn't suggest dropping the speed too low, because it does interfere with animations.

So assuming eating takes as long as it usually does, will sleeping take longer on lower speeds?
On the other hand, does it really matter? I'm okay with a Sim taking a couple of minutes to eat, shower or have sex. But I'm not okay with as much time passing during those interactions as at the normal speed.

Have you tried using NRaas Relativity? Relativity Interactions - Relativity FAQ's .

It takes a bit of time to tweak the settings but it is possible to adjust time limitations for just about everything coordinating everything with the set lifespans. I just finally got the energy/sleep times so my sims go to bed at a reasonable hour and are not waking up at 2AM ready to go for the day only to end up with no energy at 2 in the afternoon. The settings for skills and decay/motive factors can be set individually. Story Progression comes into play with some of this.

See if some of the pages I linked to help you out. Several of the members at NRaas have the system down pat and would be more help than what I can suggest if you want to consider posting over there. @igazor steered me in the right direction.

Edit: Here are a couple of threads that might be useful:
NRaas Relativity Help Thread
SP Speed Settings Explained

I pointed out in my original post that yes, I have
I won't be looking into the Story Progression options though, since I have no intentions of using story progression of any sort and would much rather see it gone entirely.

I make heavy use of the intervals, having different ones between 6 and 9, 9 and 12, 20 and 23, 23 and 6 etc etc, but the thing is that I actually play very, very, VERY little in Live Mode. At this point, I probably only get through a whole Sim day in 150-200 hours of playtime. It's really ridiculously slow. A large part of that is because I actually think the regular gameplay is pretty boring, and another is that performance is just slightly too bad to mindlessly play for more than 5 or so minutes on end.

Of course that really bothers me, because what the hell is wrong with me. It's a bit like how I've been trying to go to bed at responsible times for the last 5 years - I just cannot get myself to do it.
But once I finally get myself to start playing normally again, I think I'll definitely find the longer days to be very pleasant. I like the idea of a 60-minute Sim day. I think it's 30, maybe 32 minutes long now with the way I have it.

Sorry to be so blunt about this, but is there something we can help you with at all or is the purpose of this thread just to find out how others responding really use the mod?

Sounds like you already have all of the documentation you could possibly want on Relativity and are already using some of its advanced features. The skill and motive scaling, delta, and decay options are well-described on the FAQ page and the support threads my colleague linked to, but some of those won't be as useful to you if it is your intent to play this game scene by scene rather than day by day.

As for your preference that StoryProgression should just not exist (for anyone), thanks, but we have already received that message in the past and have taken it under advisement.

I wouldn't be posting here if I wasn't up for conversation.
And I didn't say that. I like the idea of things not existing for anyone just because I don't like them, but it's not what I was saying.

Really. Then I guess I am just misinterpreting this, sorry.

I really don't have much to add, but I wanted to say thank you for that video in the OP. Dear gods, that woman had some guts. I would have said F-this more often and likely wouldn't have completed the 24 hours. It does make me curious about how it would go if I tried it, so one of these days I'm going to log a Sim day just to see what joy I'm missing in my life.

I do use Relativity in my games, just to slow the day down some to allow for more time for extra activities. It does drive me a little nuts sometimes when they sleep too fast, so I drag their needs meter down a little so they sleep for 8 hours. It would be great to have a better-timed day.

Interesting topic.

Well, it's Emma Blackery. She puts herself through some serious shit for "science"...it's why they say she has girl balls.

If the game were even remotely realistic, none of my Sims would ever sleep for less than 10 hours. Well, either that or they'd stay up till 4 and sleep for 5 hours. Now if only they'd turn into grumpy assholes when I do that.