Upon reading the "which is your least favorite EA world?" thread, I've noticed that there have been a few posters who say the town itself was fine, but all the sims in it were unbelievably boring. This in turn, reminded me of my worst simming habit, which is to make a single "Mary Sue" sim and play a game of pure wish fulfillment until I get bored and delete the save file.

So I ask you, how do you make your sims games more interesting? What are some ways I can make my sims more interesting so I don't lose interest and delete the save file after an hour or so?

I make sims based on people I know, movie and television characters.

Like Gilligan's Island, Bewitched, Harry Potter, Phineas and Ferb, and Back to the Future. That way I feel like they have a background. You don't get that feeling with a sim out of the sim bin.

There's the usual family members I make and I tend to do horrific things to them cuz some of them deserve it. Quite the catharsis there tho sometimes I creep myself out.

At the risk of stating what many longtime players here already know...

The Sims x (any of the iterations) is many things to many different players. For quite a few of us, it's a platform for design and storytelling but what is "interesting" is very subjective. Yes, there is wish fulfillment but that's not necessarily the driving force behind many of our games and not necessarily what keeps many of us so engaged in them. Very few of the sims I play actively make it to the top of their careers and max out all of the skills they work on, on and off, much of their lives because that doesn't happen with everyone I know in real life either. It's a nice feel-good moment when a difficult to reach LTW is realized, but not all of my sims even work towards those as for many of them they are just impossible dreams. Given the obstacles I give them to face, many of my sims are perfectly happy to make just enough money to make ends meet and maybe, if so inclined, raise a couple of kids who don't turn out to be total sociopaths upon growing up.

As humans, we are flawed (well, most of us are). So are the sims that endear themselves to me, whether I created them, someone else did, or they were born in-game. Most, not all, of them have at least one "negative" trait by the time they are adults as that makes them more challenging to play and keep reasonably happy, pursuing whatever I imagine their idea of happiness is.

Once I started playing rotationally (NRaas SP and Traveler), I could never go back to concentrating on only one household in one world per game. Or, almost as boring to me, households of only one active sim. There will always be my central legacy style "main household" who are always do-gooders, pretty wealthy due to some hardworking ancestors generations ago who did reach the tops of their careers and made some very good commercial investments, love having lots of kids, and who pretty much have or can buy almost everything they could possibly want. But all around them are the siblings' and extended families who moved out and who have far less comforting environments around them all of the time. And the kids who grow up in those sometimes less than totally nurturing environments are not going to have all of the advantages that the do-gooders' kids have. Then there are the occasional households that are totally dysfunctional and runaways who run their lives and raise their families while essentially living on the streets.

This is where TS3 continues to keep me engaged because I can keep switching around to these very different households and play many different inter-connected storylines within the same game. If it weren't for the mods that allow this kind of play to continue for generations, without EA's version of story progression constantly failing or getting in the way and mucking things up, I probably would have moved on from TS3 long ago out of boredom myself. There's only so many times I can see the equivalent of "Congratulations, you have reached all of your goals/have won the game/have the highest score/have freed the princess" (or whatever) before, within that game, it just doesn't mean anything to me anymore.

That entirely depends... I sometimes have vague ideas of a background for them, as I am creating them in CAS. And, recently, I've taken to write their little bio after moving them into a house. They may not look overly interesting (I max or min the slider, then work around until it looks decent, without weird stretchings) but I give them small things. Like the family father, who has to raise his daughter or multiple children after mom divorced him/has died; I made a chubby Sim that was called a 'tree surgeon' by classmates because of his intense passion for gardening (I basically gave him any trait I could that made him love the outside and gardening stuff) as a professional gardener; the femme fatale woman who is looking for a rich husband...

I also generally just randomize traits in CAS, sometimes tweak them a bit. (No, thanks. I don't like Hydrophobic sims in my household, I do not tolerate them on NPCs)

Playing a challenge can also greatly change the storyline of a sim that are involved in it. It makes the game snd the sims themselves interesting.

This reminds me of something I have been taking a class in recently (How To Write Fiction). Creating an interesting character (in this case, a Sim) can be hit or miss if you stick to the same old method.

If you keep making a Mary Sue who is beautiful, cheat to get her all the money she wants, and she lives in a mansion with fine clothes (cheats!) then yes, it can be boring.

The best Sims seem to have some sort of flaw--too tall, kind of short (with sliders), maybe wears a type of clothing (Boho? Dirty? Always has a beenie or sunglasses on?). Fleshing out your Sims more with behaviors and "likes" based on their traits can help. Make a list in your mind or on paper or in a file about your Sim. Her name is--Daisy. She is shy, a bookworm, but ambitious. She also has the slob trait and hates children. Some of these negative set up humorous (fun!) situations. Daisy loves the color white and her house reflects this--her bedding white and her walls and furniture are white. She loves to read romance books and stand in front of the mirror but she's a slob so a lot of guys don't like her. I think you get the idea. Have her crush on the neighbor boy who is a neat freak....

Also, don't cheat too often. If you cheat (money cheat too much) it gets boring. Anything too easy is boring.

As for the looks of sims--what makes people and sims interesting to look at is imperfections. I went through a phase where all my sims had kind of big noses and weak chins, and I have to say they were cute as a button though they were probably not what most people think of as pretty. Look at the preset faces most people think of as ugly, and then tweak them to soften the effect so they're in the normal range. I like to use CMarNYC's height slider on maybe a quarter of my sims-- not a big adjustment, because that throws the animations off, but even a little one makes a big difference in appearance. I've made some tall ones, but as a short stocky person myself I'm often driven to make that kind. Likewise with fatness and muscliness-- it's there to vary, so vary it.

Personalities: It's important that the world have enough outgoing, friendly sims in it to drive interactions, but it's good to have a few loners and even maybe a couple mean sims (it's hard for me to indulge in mean sims though). I find handing out some random skills and so on changes what the sims want to do on community lots too.

Absolutely!

When I create a Sim, I've already determined their name, their personality, their looks and their role in the story.
Many of my characters were only just Sims at one point, like both my protagonists, but when I see a character in a Sim, that will always be a good reason for me to change the Sim up, to turn them into something deeper than just a little pixel person in my game. And that's really what the game mostly is to me - a tool for planning characters and settings for my script. It's only a game on occasion, when I actually play the game for the game.

Example: Lorelei Gallagher. She's a kind of person that I wanted to have in my story, partly I knew she would add certain opportunities. And I have plenty of ideas for her. Won't go into the details, that's no fun without context. Like most of the more important characters, she's at least somewhat inspired by people I know.

I first created her in TS4, with little reason to actually make her in TS3 as well. After all, many of the characters don't actually just walk around in my game, and if they're not in my Sim bin, they'll walk around in TS4. TS4's CAS is easier to mess around in anyway.


And eventually I created her in TS3 as well, but with no particular effort to make her look exactly like she's supposed to. That's a goal I find is impossible to achieve for most of them, anyway.

Well, from your post I can give a suggestion which I hope is useful: avoid making Mary Sue/Gary Stu sims! The sims shape the way you play the game; if you dislike them from the start, you will also dislike them along the way and get bored eventually. The traits and behaviors become fairly limited once you get an idea how the game works behind the scenes, which means your imagination needs to fill in the gaps.

Avoid trait extremes, either positive or negative. A good formula I've found is: 2 good traits + 1 neutral trait + 2 bad traits (or 2 neutral + 1 bad). This helps avoid piling on good traits and ending up with boring sims.
Examples:
1) Natural Cook + Green Thumb + Light Sleeper + Neurotic + Technophobe = a sim who is great at cooking and gardening but anxious about anything related to technology and mundane life in general.
2) Charismatic + Flirty + Absent-Minded + Loner + Commitment Issues = a sim who is great at wooing other sims but has no interest in building long-term relationships with them. Relationships tend to decay without the sim wanting to maintain them.
3) Friendly + Lucky + Never Nude + Shy + Evil = a sim affected by some trauma (fill in the blanks) that makes them simultaneously want to make friends and to treat them like dirt. Sometimes it works out, when they manage to break through their shyness.

Some traits, like Loner and Neurotic, can have positive effects as well: Loners get a mood boost when alone, while Neurotic sims spam a lot of cleaning-related wishes. It's up to you to decide how to make these traits and their effects more interesting.

Avoid giving your sims skills or actions that don't mesh with their personality. Call a repairman if your sim is Clumsy, because they're not supposed to be good at repairing things. Have your sim cook only basic meals if they're not interested in cooking (this requires a bit of imagination, as sims will roll wishes for skills if they start to learn them). Avoid promising and fulfilling wishes that don't match the sims' character: a sim who Hates the Outdoors will never like balloon fights or outdoor sports, and a Grumpy sim will never pillow fight.

The way your sim and house look should reflect their traits. A slob will either dress in frumpy, mismatched and dirty clothes, or will have a filthy house. A Light Sleeper will keep stereos and TVs as far from the bedroom as possible. A cook will have a fancy kitchen and dining area. A gardener's house will be decorated with plants. Try to use the sim's favorite color in decorating/clothing as well, without overdoing it.

Don't skip challenges. Set up some limits yourself. The shower broke down, your sim isn't handy (or can't be) and don't have enough money for a repairman? Tough luck, they'll have to go stinky until they can pay for the repair (no using the gym or another sim's shower unless they're Best Friends). Starving and can't afford food? No eating at another sim's house unless they're Best Friends, you can steal some produce from plants at night and hope you don't get caught. And so on.

Play scenarios you haven't played before. Play a sim who makes money only by selling produce or paintings (and set limits to how much they can make and sell). Or a sim with 3 kids and only a part-time job. Or a sim with an office job and one hobby (painting, music) who meets their partner late in life and adopts kids.

Traits are overrated, they only do half the work.
The other half, the important half, is your imagination. If you have such a thing, that is. It's the part where you observe your Sims as they live, and where you really get the feeling that they all have their own quirks and odds. It's probably not a real thing, but if you play with a Sim long enough they kind of get their own little, "placebo" personality...through the things you remember them doing, and the things you don't. Like some sort of confirmation bias.

How come I've heard Amber say "HON HON HON" in front of French Sims several times, for example? Is it because she dislikes the French and likes to make fun of them? Obviously.
And how come she sometimes seems to have that laid-back, douchey, steal-yo-girl, go-fuck-yourself, stoner attitude down? Is it because that's who she is? It's not because Sims are "fuckin' wicked smaht and shit", it's just because you see what you want to see.

One thing I learned from The Sims Medieval, sims need a critical flaw to be interesting. I usually pick one 'useful' trait for my first generation sim and leave the rest to the randomizer. Also avoid trait adjusting functions in the game, except the boarding school - education changing traits is acceptable for me.
In the gameplay, fulfill the sims' dreams, let them choose what to do for fun, whom to spend time with, and pay attention to what they are thinking or dreaming about. Personalities! Yeah!

You could also make a Sim interesting by using traits you either dislike or have never used before.
I made a 100 Baby challenge Mom with the traits Family Oriented; Charismatic; Unlucky; Coward and Commitment Issues. And only the first I did to make teaching toddler skills a smidgeon easier, the others are just for giggles. I dread every single time she cooks when she has an Unlucky day or takes care of her plants.

I know my rebellious teen(s) are much more interesting than the ones I try to make good little students. Recently one of my twins (teens) had a party as per the prompt when Mom and Dad went out of town on that free vacation. The parents showed up home around midnight and both of them got busted. I just wish the game mechanisms went further. I know there used to be a notification that said "If you do some chores around here maybe we will let you off the hook." This never seems to pop up for me anymore.

I think that happens when a teen is caught when sneaking out after curfew, then brought back by the police. One of the parents or adults in the house scolds and grounds them. I'm not 100% sure either, but I think it's the curfew because I haven't gotten that message since I disabled it.

It appears when a teen get scolded from a parent and punished, if the teen help with some housework the parent will let the teen off the hook. Haven't seen it since I used the user-directed scolding mod :P

If you have a teen in danger of being scolded, have him go to his room and lock the door so adult can't get in.

The adult will give up after awhile.

This works in real life too.

I just got one from that generator that would be impossible to make

Sul-sul! My initials are GT. My skin is alien, my hair is blonde and my eyes are hazel. People would say that my most defining feature is my tiny build. My favourite colours are pink and brown. My most defining traits are Evil and Good. Will you make me in Create-A-Sim?

Can't go wrong with aliens. I like aliens.

I love aliens too though I have decided that the bald head is recessive and having hair is a dominant genetic feature & I take the offspring into CAS every time to give them a bot of locks. Also I have decided that the aliens should not all be the same color of green, so I attend to that too.

My goal in game is eventually to have a population which is all descended from imaginary friends and aliens, in every possible color of human skin and also many shades of green. When I have stabilized that, I will consider plantsims, but I'm uninterested in the other supernaturals at this moment.

The bald head is just the Simaxian Space Service regulation haircut due to the way the space suit has to fit. The pinched nose is due to the way the oxygen masks fits on their face. Once the O2 mask has been off a few days, the nose looks small but normal. They still have pointed ears, and when their eyebrows grow back it looks just like this...
http://www.modthesims.info/d/376620

Just saying. It's not that I find aliens not beautiful or anything.

I noticed that even if my alien isn't green, she gives birth to green babies.
If I make her so she's not green and use NRAAS SP to set the genetics to something more rational, will the babies continue to be green?

Did someone say Green? :D

Yeah the random generator seems to really like aliens, but that's a pretty interesting fact Emmett Brown however I guess you could also go with a different race of aliens, like... a blue one? Or like mass effect inspired or movie inspired, guess the generator likes to give us a challenge whenever it comes to making up a whole new alien race?

Still want one of these in my game.

I'll call him... "Jeb". But he's high energy.

Edit: Look at the size of JEB's hands...

Fun facts: Jebediah Kerman's skin colour is HEX #BADA55, and his favourite explosion is every explosion.