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Test Subject
#26 Old 18th Jan 2022 at 2:14 PM
I play in one week rotations, from 8am Monday to 8am next Monday.

If a sim moves out mid-rotation, I will keep a note of how many days were left and play the new household for that amount of time.

I've yet to have an instance in my current neighbourhood of two playable sims moving in together, but in previous hoods I would always have the move-in occur before 6pm Monday or after 6pm Sunday, depending on who was moving into whose household and whether I had already played one of them that round.
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Lab Assistant
#27 Old 20th Jan 2022 at 7:02 PM
I'm in awe that people here are playing for only one day rotations One Sim day is so short, it surely doesn't take more than half an IRL hour at the most -- does it not feel like you've barely even started playing, and then you have to switch to a new family and get your brain in gear for that family, and it's like whiplash? I would forget what I was in the middle of trying to accomplish with my sims. Or do you guys pause more and micromanage each Sim's actions more, so one day takes you longer? No judgment of course, I'm just surprised!

I've been playing season rotations, so five days, but I found myself feeling like it's a little bit short! I was thinking that when I finish this round I might switch over to a 7-day seasons mod and sync up everyone's weekdays (I haven't been bothering with that) so that I'm playing through one Sim week per round and it's a season also.

Since I reinstalled my game about a month ago after not playing for years, I have only played about 4 full rotations of my current hood so far. I don't know how long I'm going to go for, I guess I'll just play until I get bored of Sims again -- I tend to fixate on something (be it Sims or another fandom) for a while and then the interest fades and I loop back around to it in a year or whatever.

The last time I had my Sims-obsession flare up I tried to play a megahood, but I think it was just too many families at once for rotational play (and too many families I didn't care about to get through before I got back to my faves). I had to stick to a smaller neighborhood.

I think a good permanent cutoff point for this Strangetown (if I don't lose my Simming focus before then...) would be when Pascal Curious's alien baby ages up to an elder... since that household was the first one I played, so her birth was the first major thing that happened in this playthrough, and I'm not super interested in playing many multiple generations down the line, it would be a nice place to stop. But she's still only a Teen so we'll see.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#28 Old 20th Jan 2022 at 10:51 PM
Quote: Originally posted by baticeer
I'm in awe that people here are playing for only one day rotations One Sim day is so short, it surely doesn't take more than half an IRL hour at the most -- does it not feel like you've barely even started playing, and then you have to switch to a new family and get your brain in gear for that family, and it's like whiplash?


Ah no, nothing like that speed. I play one day when I have a child about to age up or a teen about to go to uni.

Maybe for people who speed though it might, I mostly play speed 1 or sometimes 2 I only use 3 when sims are sleeping. Some of my families have lots of kids. I just finished playing one of my uni dorms with 6 sims and I played mostly slowly going from one to the next, checking their wants hoping someone would roll a skilling want since I play to wants. So no it can take me an hour to an evening to play 1 sim day. Families with lots of sims is speed 1 with many many pauses and checks.

I would suggest slowing down if things feel like whiplash. Get to know the sims more, their wants, fears, interests, hobbies. Watch them talk and see what they choose to do. I also use a doubled life span so that slows things down too.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#29 Old 20th Jan 2022 at 11:51 PM
Half an hour?! Half an hour?!!? Good lord. No, when I play a day I play the stuffings out of it. For example:

Grandma stays home while everybody else goes off to school and work (if it's a household where someone goes to a rabbit hole career) and by "stays home" I means goes to the grocery store, buys groceries, greets people and hangs around to gossip while I take a gander at who else is there and what else they're up to, goes home to put up the groceries and work in the garden, takes a nap about the time the teens come home from school. Oldest teen is tired, takes a nap; second teen is tanking fun, calls their Local Teens social group together, goes to the park with their friends, hangs out on the play equipment, takes a swim, flirts themself into a crush while, again, I take a look at who else is there and the teen's cousin and the townie who came home with him three days ago get to know each other, when tired they all come home with the active teen, who takes a nap. Gramma gets up from nap, makes lunch in time for the children to get home, tanking fun, which they get up by playing red hands with the members of the group while cousin and townie get stuck into a hangout in the middle of the living room and are clearly becoming an item, oldest teen gets up, plays chess with one of the kids or a social group member till they get the logic point they want and the fun levels they need and go off to do homework as adults come home from work and make out at the mailbox, kids fall asleep, younger teen wakes up, does homework, makes mac and cheese and FIRE!! Fireman comes, nobody dies but all the social group members play bathroom roulette until almost all of them decide they're too stinky to stay, Granny gets a callback from the much younger Romance sim she dated last rotation, goes out on a date, has a wonderful time, woohoos in a photo booth, rolls an engagement want and proposes, brings her home and woohoos her again in her daughter's car, but one of the Romance sim's other lovers comes by to kick the trash can and wanders in to play the piano. Meanwhile the adults are dancing together in the living room even though the townie and the cousin are still there hanging out, kids wake up, youngest one has to be taught to study, both of them do homework, now it's past midnight and they don't have the option to go back to bed so Mom takes them to the playground and lets them run around till their energy bars are yellow when she brings them home and they're about to go to bed when suddenly a cut scene rolls and I hadn't even realized Dad was at the telescope but he must've been because wow that sure is an abduction cut scene and now everybody's awake and the cousin and townie finally decide it's time to go home and Granny's fiancee's piano-playing lover attacks Granny and Mom goes to bed so teen has to escort the attacker off the lot and just when I get everybody else back into bed the saucer returns and spits out Dad to the musical sound of chimes and then it's six o'clock, time to save and go to the next house in the rotation, or go to bed myself because I've been playing this house since suppertime and it's getting a little late...

Not all households are quite that exciting (I like to have a few small, low-drama households in between the big busy families, to rest up), but you'll notice that they didn't even throw a party, or have a business to run, or a toddler to wrangle, or any pets. Typically, by the time I have played one day of a family I am ready for the next house because I've extracted every single ounce of fun from it and now it's time for something different.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Mad Poster
#30 Old 21st Jan 2022 at 1:18 AM
Quote:
I'm in awe that people here are playing for only one day rotations One Sim day is so short, it surely doesn't take more than half an IRL hour at the most -- does it not feel like you've barely even started playing, and then you have to switch to a new family and get your brain in gear for that family, and it's like whiplash? I would forget what I was in the middle of trying to accomplish with my sims. Or do you guys pause more and micromanage each Sim's actions more, so one day takes you longer? No judgment of course, I'm just surprised!


Half an hour? There are 24 hours in Sim days, just like ours. Save for sleeping, or working, they do have lives and I play them in real time, because I have Chris Hatch's 'half-speed' mod which slows down the game to normal time. A lot can happen in 24 hours, for either pixels or humans.

It takes me about an hour sometimes to get through 1 house-because if they're home, they're doing things. That's why I keep a running diary of each day, with each household, and with footnotes about what happened that day so I can carry it over the next day.

And guess what? You can stop the game for a while and play an entirely different family the next time. There are no rules about which family you're supposed to play, even rotationally, as long as you play them all in the day.

I don't like to speed play for them. I'd miss so much.

Receptacle Refugee & Resident Polar Bear
"Get out of my way, young'un, I'm a ninja!"
Grave Matters: The funeral podium is available here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/e6tj...albits.zip/file
My other downloads are here: https://app.mediafire.com/myfiles
Mad Poster
#31 Old 21st Jan 2022 at 1:22 AM
I play each family for about a day if I've got more than one family in town though that isn't going to be the case right away in my Pleasantview Epic Challenge when I first begin as only one couple is to arrive in the first year and more couples in later years.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#32 Old 21st Jan 2022 at 3:32 AM
So today, Lilith, Drik and Angela graduated uni and are about to go on a two-day camping trip. Since none of them got on academic probation (unlike Ophelia) and they are the last three to graduate from this dorm, they have 2 days to spare still being a YA before the real world hits, so I thought camping might be nice. I don't know how long it will take to play their camping trip which is on a community lot set up for camping with a big lake in Riverblossum Hills, it all depends on what happens, but as Peni said "play the stuffings out of it." There is a whole lot more to this game than skill-job-needs.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
e3 d3 Ne2 Nd2 Nb3 Ng3
retired moderator
#33 Old 21st Jan 2022 at 10:43 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Peni Griffin
Half an hour?! Half an hour?!!? Good lord. No, when I play a day I play the stuffings out of it.

Me too! I have a lot of sims with owned businesses at the moment, so playing those takes a while but is always fun. Plus, I am always stopping to take pictures (I take a LOT of pictures of my sims ) so progress is slow!
But- I do know each of my sims really well, and I enjoy them very much! When I was playing Sims 3 on the fast aging span, I got through ten generations in a very quick time but felt I barely remembered most of the sims.
Lab Assistant
#34 Old 25th Jan 2022 at 4:49 AM
But, I *don't* speed up and I *do* sit and spend time with my sims and look at their hobbies, wants, & fears. I'm not only doing "just skill-job-needs".
The game clock goes at the rate of 1 IRL minute being 1 Sim hour, yes? I like to try to stay on speed 1 and to pause as little as possible, because I feel like if I pause all the time I end up micromanaging and it's not as fun for me, I'd rather just let my sims do things autonomously. So... that's 24 minutes... and of course you pause sometimes, but also Sims have to go to work & school & go to sleep, and when everyone's sleeping or off-lot it of course hits 3x speed. And yeah, on occasion I might hit speed 2 for a little bit if what's going on is just a single Sim sitting and doing something slightly boring like skilling out of a book.
And I have community time mod, so we are not gaining extra time from nowhere, I'm only getting extra time if I send part of the household out to the community lots when other people are at home, which does happen but not EVERY day.

So that's like... usually about half an hour to play a Sim day. Right? I mean, I have not been keeping strict measurements. But it feels about right based on how long it's taking me to get through a round when I sit down to sim for a bit.

I'm sorry, I think I phrased my post wrong. I should not have said "at most" half an hour, I should have said "on average". But I think it does even out to about half an hour per Sim day.
But I feel like these responses are surprising me because everyone seemed to jump to the conclusion that I am not paying any attention to my Sims and am just speeding through the game. I swear I'm not! And that's exactly why the 1-day rounds would seem like whiplash for me, I want to be able to sit down and settle in to spending time with that family for more than just a day at a time. We just got started spending time together, I don't want to pop over to another family right away!

Of course, pausing to take pictures makes sense. I don't take loads of pictures, I should have thought of that. And I don't have any businesses yet (although I think I will start one soon). And having bigger households also makes sense! Most of my households have around 2-4 Sims.
Mad Poster
#35 Old 25th Jan 2022 at 5:38 AM
Aegagropilon (who I miss) used to get what seemed to me fantastic amounts of things done in very short spans of time, and she's a virtuoso at interpreting behavior into character and drama. I think we all play at the speeds we're most comfortable and have the most fun. It hadn't occurred to me, but with all that stuff going on I also pause fairly often. I don't want to miss things because I was rotating the view, and I head-hop a lot, and take snapshots, which anyone who's seen my simblr knows I don't spend time staging. I also have to interrupt myself a few times, to fix and eat dinner, to run to the bathroom, to refresh my drink, to figure out what the cat in my face wants. And then I look up and it's been three hours or something and I still have to arrange and write up the album.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#36 Old 25th Jan 2022 at 12:57 PM
Thanks for all the replies! :D
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