Game Play Questions, How do YOU play?
notovny:
Assuming that I haven't already set in motion some pairing in the Teen age, most of my Sims pick their mates in University. From this, I usually only judge from the following criterea.
1. Is the potential mate already working in one of my Businesses? If No, then...
2. Is the potential mate active enough to Run? If yes, then...
3. Do I mind the facial features of the Sim?
Sexual orientation is based on what I feel like giving a Sim, as I don't use ACR. I don't particularly pay attention to attaction. And because I want to have a significant minority of Green-Skinned Sims, every Sim who is descended from Adam Black is getting a custom-made full-blooded Alien Townie as a mate.
I'm still playing my original neighborhood, Pleasantivew, and almost every Sim I routinely play is descended from one of five families: The Roomies and the Vergonyes (My favorite Sims 1 Families), the Blacks, the Blues, and the Yellows. None of the Pleasantview premades have married in, though Townies, Downtownies, and University Sims are allowed as mates. Seven generations from Chris & Belle Roomies at this point. There's a ridiculous level of longevity in this neighborhood, which I attribute to Katelyn Roomies' takeover of Faustian Biotech, and establishment of the Zeitstall Labs Cowplant Facilities.
Thrown-together Family Tree here.
Zazazu:
I totally have to steal your tree-making software. I've been doing it manually in Photoshop. It sucks.
imyourboy:
Quote from: notovny on 2008 July 24, 13:35:24
Thrown-together Family Tree here.
This is fantastic. I'm going to put together a family tree of Pleasantview! Thanks for the link!!
Count Four:
One of the first families I played extensively was a Romance/Family couple, and it worked out pretty good. You just have to make sure the slut doesn't get caught. Or you could let them hook up and let him get his heart broken. They don't have to all be happy all the time.
In Strangetown, Phillip was all hot and bothered over Meadow Thayer as a teen, who was Romance. I grew her up with him, let him have a relationship with her, and of course, he caught her red-handed. He survived and went on to meet the town she-nerd, with whom he had a nice little life. (Meadow ended up as caretaker of the Olive Specter Memorial Museum and Mausoleum.)
I sometimes have a pairing in mind, but I usually don't force it. The pairings they develop that I didn't expect can help keep the game from being too boring. My singer and guitarist were supposed to hook up, but the singer was three-bolts for the aspiring politician, and the guitarist got along better with the trailer-trash queen. Rock star and mayor in the mayoral mansion, professional busker and perpetually unemployed, perpetually unfaithful tramp living in the Trashiest house in the hood (I love trashy CC); that was more interesting than what I'd had in mind.
Sometimes I'll break up a beautiful three-bolt relationship simply because they have incompatible Interests and can't have a decent conversation, which annoys me. I rarely go searching for the perfect three-bolt mate, anyway. They can get along fine in a one or two-bolt relationship if nothing else presents itself, and I find it more realistic when they have to choose the best they can get out of the sims they meet in the regular course of their lives.
A want to get engaged/married means nothing to me; I decide whether they're going to be respectable, or just live in sin. The busker/trailer tramp got married; the mayor/rock star lived in sin (made sense to me.)
With CAS sims, I know who's going to be straight, gay or bi as I'm making them. With others, it's sometimes off the gender of their first best friend as a kid/teen. It's pretty random, actually. And I play with preg for all genders, so no one has to get left out of the gene pool. Unless, of course, they and their mate have truly incompatible face templates and I don't want to look at succeeding generations of fug.
As for the Uni-is-boring-problem, I deal with it by not allowing all the kids to go to college. The ones who are fortunate enough to go to Uni get sent off as early in their teens days as possible. Some have to stay in the main hood, slogging through adolescence and teen jobs with no hope of higher education. Then I play the main hood and Uni in synch, so I'm not spending an interminable amount of play time in Uni; about six days per lot while I've got college students.
Most of my Family sims drop out of Uni as soon as they've found a mate, as I'm convinced the only reason they ever want to go to Uni is to trawl for Mr. or Miss Right. Then they move back in with the folks and wait for their Twu Wuv to graduate and come to take them away from it all. Knowledge sims are sometimes actively discouraged from relationships during Uni, as I tend to see them as academically obsessed. Fortune sims have to make buttloads of money, Popularity sims have to join the Secret Society, etc., before they are allowed to graduate.
Sims who don't go to Uni get upgraded with the Lot Debugger only when they have a) reached the top of a career, or b) fulfilled a lifetime want. I consider them graduates of the school of hard knocks.
SnootCB:
Oh, wow notovny. Thanks for pointing out that family tree site.
For deciding who gets to go to Uni, I follow a few easy rules. The sim must:
- be Knowledge or Fortune aspiration and/or
- have a Uni career LTW (I have a hack, from here I think, that enables those) and/or
- have a twin that meets one of the above criteria and/or
- be heir/ess and/or
- have a parent with the "graduate 3 spawn from college" LTW
All that means that, oh, maybe 75% of my sims make it to college. If a sim that does not meet the above criteria consistantly rolls the Want to go to college I might send them if the college isn't already overcrowded, but they will probably be dropped or flunked out.
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