cause i certainly do. pretty much how i play in every other aspect is unusual compared to what i normally see, and family gameplay is no different. i really don't do it at all. idk why but i have more fun playing single sims, childless couples, and families with older kids than ones that have a bunch of babies and toddlers; the babies are too annoying for me. and i largely avoid them in this game because at least in sims 3 and 4 you could switch to another family, play with them until the baby is a kid, then switch back to the original family. sims 2 doesn't have that luxury, lol. and when i eventually start tackling my custom hood ideas (right now i just don't have the time or talent to try) pregnancies and kids are still not going to be the source of my drama - the "themes" for them don't really call for them, and what i have as a baseline will probably be interesting enough on its own.

do you play in a way that's not "the norm" for gameplay?

I think there may be some unusual features in my game. I've been playing Veronaville (my main game) for eight and and a half years now, and in that time I've just started the second pregnancy in the 'hood. There have been about 6 marriages, most of them in the past few months. And no deaths at all. In fact no Sim has ever died in any of my games. I've never see the Grim Reaper in my game. (And I'm in no hurry to meet him -- I'm more than a little afraid that he'll leave my Sims and take me.) There is an extraordinarily high proportion of gay Sims in my game -- in fact downtown Veronaville is almost entirely gay. I have no fear of playing single Sims who live alone. But they tend to have very full social lives -- it's not unusual to find the in the house at midnight still entertaining seven or eight guests. I like playing Romance Sims, but few of them are marriage wreckers. Many live in polyamorous open relationships, while others are content with only one lover -- as long as they get woohoo at least once a day (preferably two or three times!).

My main game is Veronaville but I play it with lots of CAS Sims and townies (many if them now turned playable). The pre-mades are all there, but they don't get to dominate the game. With the possible exception of Juliette Capp that is. Veronaville is now a Grand Duchy, and as Grand Duchess Juliette -- still a teen -- is head of state. Which helps to make sure that the needs and wants of the town's numerous teenagers don't get forgotten.

I've never had Sims grow rich in ordinary gameplay. Once they have enough to cover their needs and a few little luxuries, they'd rather go out shopping or dancing, or stay at home entertaining, than skill for a promotion they don't need. I find it much easier to empathise with Romance Sims and Pleasure Sims than with Family or Fortune Sims. (Which worries me a little, as I fear it might mean, by Peni's yardstick, that I'm immature!) But I like to play in such a way that my Sims enjoy the game at least as much as I do. In fact, if there was a happiness index of all the Sims in the Sims universe, I'd like to think my Sims might be near the top. :lovestruc

Unusual gameplay style? Maybe?!

I like playing with babies and toddlers. I think they're fun, often more so than kids and teens. But then again I also do other things than just the regular old "eat, sleep, poop" routin with them - I love taking baby/toddler pics, and those little cutiepies can keep me entertained for ages (even outside the game, making CC).



I've had sims die in my game, but they never stay that way, because if it happens I don't save my game. So no proper, saved deaths in my game since maybe 2006/7-ish... My sims kinda live forever, usually I'll let them become adults and then they stay that way. I have very few elders in my game, and the few I have tend to be for storytelling purposes (I don't like the way their age is "fluid" at the end - it bothers me).

I do a lot of storytelling, and when I do I tend to do changes to the lots/sims first, then save the lot I'm on, and then "wreck havoc" with OMSPs, poses, teleporting, adding to families, etc. and when I'm done, I don't save the lot. It gives me a reset lot that's "cleared for duty", nothing has been touched on other lots, and there's no cleanup to do anywhere. Plus, all the changes I did in the beginning are still there ready for the next time. The only issue is if the lot crashes when I'm in the middle of something, but at least I have the reset point and a clean slate (sometimes that's not too bad). No idea if anyone does this the same way, but I've found it useful.

Back when I played more family-style I used to let multiples (as much as quads, if there were enough adults/teens in the house) skill up with potty/walk/talk simultaneously, so I used to take pictures of them getting the "finished" skill bubble at the same time, as an extra challenge. Had a lot of fun with that (walking, that's a tough one with the random animations).

I've branched out a little since I moved (as in extracted and recreated) my sims to Strangetown playing a little with some premades, but other than that, all my sims (except townies/downtownies/premades turned spouses/roommates) are born (or adopted as babies) in-game and stem from a single sim I made in 2008 who married Nina Caliente and had twelve kids with her. I never make households in CAS anymore unless I've needed some fresh blood in the neighbourhood, which hardly ever happens, but then I've put them on a lot with a phone so they can be reached and not played with them but had them act basically like townies unless they move in with someone I do play with. This also means that I get a bit wary each time two of my own sims show romantic or sexual interest in each other since I have to go check if they're related far back/apart enough that I feel comfortable with it. I'm six generations in so many of them don't count as related or would have no way of knowing they have a common ancestor, but in my head they're all part of the "clan".

I guess my playstyle isn't really "unusual" by regular standards, but it is kinda different than most people here. It's kind of ironic actually, how it evolved.

When I first started out, I played like I played the sims 4. I had the families I made, mostly my self sim who married the given hood's high witch, and pretty much only played them, sometimes switching around between them when it was like, the kids went to uni or moved out or something, but still only my own sims. Then I moved on to playing the pre-made sims, then reading the forums decided to do a wants-based play, where I only make sims do something if they want it, or they do it autonomously. Then, I slowly realized that pretty much nothing I'd want will happen like that, because sims barely wanted to have their first kiss, get married, build skills... and they absolutely did not do them autonomously either. I downloaded ACR to do that too, even randomized gender preferences, but then they would woohoo too much on community lots, and I'd had to remember townies' relationships when looking for potential spouses... I wasn't a fan of all that freedom I gave my sims, it just wasn't interesting enough for me.

So now, I moved back to being God once again. I do still pay attention to my sims' wants, in fact a lot of the times I get ideas from there, but I do keep them on a short leash compared to some others: I decide who gets to be gay, I decide how many children they have, I decide what job they get, if they have nothing to do they put themselves to good use and build skills (of if they're teens, argue with their parents), and of course fears very much do get fulfilled. Just the other day, I decided I want everyone to start growing a garden, and now everyone is going to have a garden. And I gotta say, feels interesting to be in control.

...and now I think I need professional help.

You have professional help. Your sims have professions, don't they?

Given the Current State of Affairs, wanting to have control over something is reasonable. Taking control over imaginary people rather than real ones is a healthy outlet for this desire. Don't let anybody tell you different! Anyone who does is either woefully misinformed, or trying to control you, or both. Remember, the natural enemy of escapism is jailers!

As for me, I don't have an odd playstyle. My playstyle is perfect and normal and it's everybody else who's peculiar.

i wonder how people are able to play their games for so long...i would love to myself but i'm paranoid about corruption. have a fear that a few months playing a particular neighborhood would go down the drain once corruption starts rearing its ugly head...and my fear is even greater for my eventual custom ones.

i allow death and aging to happen in my game, although unlike a lot of people i try to keep my sims' lives mostly problem free and try to satisfy their ltws as best as i can (unless it's some nightmare like 50 first dates...yuck).

since i'm using tarlia's fixed dead versions of the neighborhoods i'm definitely planning on resurrecting a few sims...still haven't decided who though...

my main mode is very sporadic. rarely will i have a goal during a play session, i just let the game take it from where i load up

I think maybe the oddest aspect of my playstyle is that I don't usually try to fix glitches or mistakes, if something less than perfect happens, those roll into the collective story of the hood. It's the little imperfections that make for a unique story, and if you play long enough it becomes part of the history of the hood. I can be like 'This one time there was immaculate simception' or 'I have a sim who has a phobia of living alone', 'this family was forever changed because their mother disappeared, 'this guy vanished for five years in the desert', 'this guy had to move in with his family because he had an accident and suffered amnesia', 'this family got evicted because of an infestation' which are all true stories, or at least carry a kernel of truth to them, resulting from odd or accidental actions on my part.

I also focus on needs over wants. I've just always been that way in playing and wants come secondly.

I think I'm pretty typical. The only thing that may be odd (I'm not sure) is that I tend to play a sim family very slowly for a few sim days. I spend a lot of time paused, and I occasionally take pictures saved externally, and I try to play out premade scenarios somewhat as intended. Perhaps to play an uberhood slowly with hardly any progress into the next generation is atypical, but I don't like to pass by each generation swoosh in something that took a lot of time and effort to install. I like to savor it.
I have managed to complete more haphazard playstyles in what I consider "throwaway" neighborhoods. I've enjoyed the satisfaction of beating an Apocalypse challenge, and the stress of raising seven toddlers simultaneously.
I used to want to create a Test of Time neighborhood, and I even passed by a generation in one, but when I restarted from scratch and tried to make it perfect, it just never... was. I really like my current modern hood because it's easier for it to feel complete, since it's the time period the game was designed for, after all.

I've got only two families in my BACC game in Dodge and it's nearing the winter of 1841 as the town hasn't had any rain all summer and it's been warmer than usual so far.I've got both families homesteading in Dodge and will add a few more homesteaders to the town over the next few years.It's also being built up as in the service center is being expanded and about to add a toddler play area for when couples begin to have babies.

I'm a bit similar, in a way. Every now and then I go and play Sims 4 again for a while in order to exercise playing with control again. I LOVE playing wants based, but sometimes I get so tunnel-visioned on it that I feel like I lose all control and kind of like the game is playing itself if it makes sense. So as silly as it is the fact that the only way to make interesting/fun things happen in Sims 4 is to do it through your own control helps me loosen up a bit and do what I want and play out my own ideas a little bit. Usually I end up going back to sims 2 and incorporating a little bit of that back into my wants-based play so it's a little more balanced out.

I definitely think it's a little odd that I do that, but I don't mind it. I guess an alternative would be to just play sims 2 and hide the wants panel or ignore it haha. But going to a different game helps loosen up the tunnel vision a bit better for me personally.

Sugoisama, I tell my kids (all six of them) that they should be glad I get my micromanaging out on my sims' lives and not theirs! (Given current career goals, starving in a garret or national forest or fifteen years of college seem most probable outcomes: no one wants to do much of anything with high potential to get rich.)

Either I play challenges or rotations. One involves a lot of micromanagement (Apocalypses, Toddler Mania) and the other doesn't, but requires a lot of tracking. I don't know that either's particularly typical. If you hang out with rotational players, you'll feel like that's the norm, which is a lot of us here. If you hang out with challenge players, you'll feel like that's the norm. Boolprop forum always had a zillion legacy players and for quite a while I thought that was the usual way people played.

Mine's pretty random. I go through phases of playing in different families. I end up downloading loads of custom neighborhoods never end up playing them for too long. I've tried rotanial play and challenges but I get always bored with them.

@Shadow214 -That's how it used to be before I started playing my towns by challenge rules which forced me to take my time growing the town.I've got my BACC town in it's second winter and a third couple is likely to arrive to cleam their homestead next spring in the year of 1842.Dodge is slwoly starting to grow and it's not that much longer until the first couples begin tryint to start families.
I've been setting up Pleasant Valley for my Pleasantview Epic Challenge and the first couple is to arrive in the spring of 1600 at the turn of the 17th century.I'll be playing the ancestors of the Pleasantview families as my own custom recreations using an empty terrain template of Pleasantview.

It happens. I think the "JayTee" that's been my profile picture for quite some time might be in an unrecoverable neighborhood. So I made another.

I've had a default neighborhood going for a few years now ( ) and I like to take 'printscreens' every so often, so something exists should the neighborhood implode on itself. I make sure I'm doing my best not to spend all my time playing the Sims these days and even if the neighborhood runs itself into the ground I figure it was a good playthrough while it lasted.

I noticed that I do this since forever in Sims 3 and I think it's odd but I don't care lol.
I have a beautiful human straight couple, usually either edgy (artists) , bougie (flashy) , high class or rarely poor. When they become middle aged I often make the husband age like wine depending on his style but high class and bougie usually turn up like James Bond, sexy and elegant while. p
Poor and edgy sims turn up like Johnny Depp id they're not problematic. They never loose hair, have normal weight and slightly muscular but nothing unrealistic. The only exception is when the male sim has an addiction and is an asshole.
However... I give my female sims a makeover where they usually age like milk. They're in 90% of the case slightly overweight or obese, if poor or edgy with an addiction or being miserable they have messy hair, if edgy they have grown out of that with a nice style and if bougie and high class they're dressed super elegant but often boring.
Vampires are always gothic and well dressed and remain supermodels for... forever.
Idk why I always ruin my female sims but don't like to make my male sims look bad lmao. I'm a girl btw.