Watching Desperate Housewives is helpful, kinda gives me an incentive to change my playstyle a bit. :P

ETA: In general, just watch TV, you'll get ideas (and some motivation).

Last edited by M.M.A.A. : 31st Jan 2013 at 11:01 PM.

Try the mega-list of mini challanges it sure looks fun it gives you a challange to do when you click and the eps that the challange need im going to download it once my new heir gets out of collage.

[QUOTE=ansleon
The hippie commune idea above sounds fun..(That's another kind of challenge and difference in game play which can be a lot of fun, building a lot out over time.)[/QUOTE]

I still have a commune going - impossible without mods that allow any number of people & pets. And I like it better with ACR's "no jealously" - free love and lots of babies, ya know. Nobody worked except a few pets, and the "odd" serious and industrious child

Listening to the game's music and sounds using ear/headphones can create a whole a difference than with speakers. Trust me, it gets you into the zone!

I am currently in a funk, but one of the best things I did to make the game more interesting was download a mod for more realistic pay. It makes the game harder, cause you can't instantly get everything you want it takes time.

The maid and the gardener might also want some little extra pay. They work for eight hours, and earn something like 85 bucks for the day.

If there was some nasty thing in the game, like inflation, it would make the game more realistic but maybe actually too difficult, especially for all new sims families.

I think the thing that is helping me keep my game interesting is that I'm blogging about it. Now I have to manipulate what happens in game to make it fit the story I'm telling in my blog and I have to make all the families in town affected by what happens at the other houses. Before I just focused on each family as separate from the others and not as a whole neighborhood. Also, I no longer try for perfect families. Several people are in aspiration failure right now.

The key to keeping one neighborhood interesting over the long run is variety. But not just crazy idiots in pink ape suits, I mean real subtle variety.

Number one, by class. Have streets with nothing but poor sims and the Grunge set decor. Probably one third of my houses are these lower class people, they don't care about children born out of wedlock, they use every aspiration reward they can get a hold of (especially energizers, money trees, and printing presses). They can't have good jobs and they are armed with guns in their house if a burglar or enemy comes by. Their kids never go to college unless someone is exceptional. A fraction of these poor people are criminals who will do anything for money. You just have to roleplay them.

Next on the middle class streets are desperate strivers. These families focus like mad on making money so they can move out and move up the block to a better house. They don't break the laws ever, but they will go crazy with home businesses, investing in other lots, getting their kids to college. If they get someone up to the top career of politics then I say they have a voice in the town council. I'm nerdy enough to keep track of my town council. It is still totally controlled by the old money conservatives.

And I have 2 to 3 families very rich, they consider themselves nobility and won't mingle with the middle class folk. Those ones have total control over what kind of houses are built in the hood. You have to rp this -- you have to say, "Okay, Family X has a a lot money and wants a better house, but if it doesn't meet building codes they have to live downtown or in a subhood if they want some fancy house that is not up to code."

My rich sims are protectors of the whole town, and will not let ugly buildings be made. At this point, after seeing how boring University is, they are the only ones whose children can go to Uni. My first rush on getting Uni was like cool! Uni! And half the kids went. Now it's maybe five percent.

I have 40 households in my custom hood that I have run for years, and never the same family twice because they are all unique and full of drama. And by the time I get back to a family, I have mostly forgot what is going on with them. I use the photo album to remind me, I always pause, check their inventory, check their aspiration rewards, read the photo story, then go from there. Many are dealing with traumatic memories -- so and so dumped them, so and so died, etc. .. but many others are totally fine. I will still shake things up if needed.

Also have variety in sexual preference. Myself I'm a straight boy (yes yes name), but it was fun for me to try out gays, prudes, religious fanatics, etc. I try to make each household different. Most boring to me is gay men, but having a few in my hood anyway made me think about how they would feel and what they would do for fun. Like for any guy, making lesbians was too easy. I have a sort of lesbian epidemic I'm trying to slowly ease out of.

I would suggest using the Simbologism tree to make sure your hood has realistic mix of gay and straight (about 10% gay?). It makes it more challenging for gay sims, but what you do is make downtown lots that are gay or les nightclubs, using the Visitor Controller, which bans marrieds, straights, wrong gender, elders, etc. The Maxis default of everyone being bi is kind of not realistic or interesting for storytelling.

I would like to get TG girls into my mix but I have not really found a good tool for it. I have about 400 sims, so maybe 5 or so should be TG.

Other things you could do, which will work and I can put in another post:

Prisons, simlogical
Asylums, not like the challenge, just for people who don't fit anymore
Retirement Homes, push your old folks from the poor hoods here, watch TV while it runs in the background. Have one sim who is the Manager, not an elder, he or she tells the others what to do. Move graves to a common lot in your hood.
Private Clubs: I have one for my rich sims, no townies, no downtownies. I want to make something similar for only Crime path sims, using the SimBlender

So there are some ideas, hope they help!

Last edited by sonyablue : 22nd Feb 2013 at 08:24 PM.

The way I made the sims 2 fun was I created a custom neighborhood with custom npc/townies and the like. Initially I had few community lots because I'm not the best builder, but I eventually downloaded several lots (and used maxis lots) to create a neighborhood with a ton of community lots to visit for sims of all personalities. I had clubs, hangouts, bowling allies, restaurants, shops, plazas, parks, gyms (with pools), and even a children specific lot shaped like a dollhouse. (If you look hard enough like me, you can find a lot of lots without a ton of custom content, or any at all, so you don't need to over-bloat your downloads file).

I also created several starting families to give the town more life, made sure a bunch of my npcs/townies had custom hair, and put in a few geneticized eyes (and face defautls) that worked with the default maxis skin to make my townies more interesting and varied.

This makes my game fun because it gives me a variety of community lots to visit where I can meet a variety of beautiful adult sims, and cute children.

Hi, this is a great thread.

I have been a Sims fan since The Sims and I must admit one can get into a rut..

I have always made my own characters and my own houses. Lots of unique CC. Always played the same Hood.

Since a coupla days ago I have been doing Pure Maxis. (with my hacks/mods to combat the stupid, of course).

I placed every Maxis house/business. I placed every Sim from the SimBin.

EVEN UNI.

I will Bat Box the LTW's that are repititive and use a few "fake college degees" to get into as many jobs as possible. Other than that I plan to let all the Hoods interact via Bluewater Village and Uni and see what stories emerge.

Uni is a challenge. I have reduced each semester to 24 hours which should make it less tedious. I won't play every character in Uni, just my move-ins from my Hoods, but all the Binned Sims willl be there for interactions.

OFB families will have to run their businessess, babies must be born, grandchildren must graduate from college.!

With default skins and faces, the best BHav mods, and judicious use of my userstartup.cheat it Just Might Work!

A girl with whom I used to be friends was the master of spicing up her game play.
My favourite of hers was the "Human Zoo." In the back garden of her sims house, She'd make a multi-level box house covered in windows and use 'Moveobjects on" to trap any walkbys or NPCs in there. Her family would go out every day and watch the suffering trapped people in the seats provided. She soon tired of that, so she decided she's have a sadistic matriachal family, throwing all the boys born into the family into an enclosure of the zoo so the social worker couldn't get to them, but refused to look after them too. She'd put garden sprinklers in the enclosures for some reason... O_o

In another one it was compulsory for her family to take the maid as a mistress, until they had tons of housekeeper-lovers through the generations.

I wish I could remember some more of her projects like that but I've either repressed my memories of her or I just can't remember.

A midlife crisis is always fun to play out - buy a new car, ditch the spouse for someone young, try and befriend the teenagers.

I've also had sims who have lived with tons of families in the neighbourhood - but steals stuff whenever they move out.

The "Too far ahead" or "Too far behind" the times are always a cool one for me, since I play a mid-century based neighbourhood - so I'll have a sim family from 2012 in my 50s neighbourhood, etc.

If I ever get bored of my sims game, I usually try a different game entirely for a few days. Bethesda games are pretty good for that sort of inspiration, but recently I've played Forza Horizon and Mass Effect. Mass Effect got me wanting to interact with sims more, and Horizon is great for landscaping and architectural inspiration...There is a town in it that drives me crazy though. It just doesn't fit in. The wood on the houses is dark and exposed, there's river rock used for everything, hardly any bright colors on the housing...It feels a lot like a European style village on the east coast, not a small town in Colorado.

I don't remember which game inspired me to make Miller's Village, which I made a long while ago. There are townies, but they're all the cookie cutter ones made when spawning a town, with no familes in the bins or in other houses. There's no one else but the one family, and the goal is to fill up the town, downtown, and shopping district with interesting sims that branch off the original family. These other branches grow with the original family, and they can keep family ties or forget they have cousins and meet them in a different town. It's a good Sim challenge, and it's also a good challenge for building, since each of the 'towns' (Downtown, original world and shopping district) have a different appeal and style.

Another thing I've started doing is the Deathroll condition. Basically, I roll a (virtual) 10 sided die, and if it's 10, then the sim I was rolling for is having a 'Day of Fate'. I roll on random events throughout the day, such as a sim going outside (Random lightning), or taking a bath (Slipping fall), or even interacting with the kids (Sickness). If I roll a ten on a event like this, I then kill the sim with the tombstone in a manner related to their death roll. It makes things more interesting, and a bit more realistic, since accidents happen all the time. I could post full rules if there isn't something already like this, and if anyone's interested.

I started a family, consisting of two girls and one guy.
First I made ​​a couple of first girl and the guy, and then made ​​a couple of the other girl and the same guy.

The girls did not know that the guy sleeping with the two of them.

When the first girl found out about this situation, she became very angry. She learned the evil spells, has become a real witch, and turned the guy into a vampire.

She made it to the other girl and the guy and could not be together. That's the story.

For the longest time my hoods pretty much ran with one family at a time, only a single member of another family interacting with them if they happened to walk by the house. But this time I have focused a lot on businesses which bring all members of the neighborhood out and about to mingle. Also, the thing that I have found most fun recently is building a 'school' for all children in the neighborhood. It is basically a place where all children in the hood gather from 8:00 am to 7:00 pm and mingle with each other. Some became fast friends, others became enemies right away and are still enemies though they have grown into adults already.

I also had the school kids all move into the same house as teens to learn skills and develop romantic interests. Much drama ensued but it was fun. Now they all have coupled off and have children, though only one couple is married. Ironically the couple with no kids. :D

Anyway, just an idea.

Anyone got some ideas from me?, i have a couple, Dante is my heir from gen 2 and he had a wife but she died in birth and now is moving on with new girlfriend Helena, well Dante is full skilled and completed his ltw so whats next?, i hate affairs and alien babies

Apart from "Fully skilled and completed his ltw" what is Dante like? What would he do? I would think he'd be overprotective of his new wife and the kid, for one thing. Do his new girlfriend and the child get along? What about spares - can you move in someone to complicate his life? What about starting a business? Becoming a witch? Rivalries/enmities with other sims?

It strikes me that if you're bored in second generation of a legacy, legacy play may not be for you; or, you need to find a way to play your legacy which is more interesting to you.

Focus on other characters. What's Helena want? What do their kids want? There's no earthly reason you have to stay completely stuck on one male Sim when there are other people in the house.

Ahh.. they dont have kids the baby died with Dante first wife,Helena is a knowledge sim so she often rolls for skiling i think its boring because i am attached to them the household only has Dante and helena, my first gen just died, also Dante is a warlock and a single child i have one child-per-gen so i dont have to choose heirs its so hard.

But easy is boring and hard is interesting, so there's your problem right there.

I agree

I created a family who neglected their kids just so I could see the Social Worker take them away.
Now I'm interested in seeing if I will have them pop up again when I someone adopts. Maybe I'll place them with a nice older couple

Going to University is always fun