Play Style: The Nitty Gritty
Horanda:
I spend lots of time building. Not because I enjoy it particularly, with the limitations of build mode, but because I want houses where my Sims can live sensibly without the frustration of unplayable design tricks. Early on I downloaded hundreds of lots from the exchange, all occupied, some of the Sims are still in my game (yes, I know that's a VBT, but no problems so far), but not one of the houses survived the first play session. I find it easier to move a family out, bulldoze, and start over, than to renovate.
I do not decorate. If they don't need it to live, they don't need it. I don't landscape for the same reason. Planting flowers causes weeds.
I CAS Sims when I am starting a hood, then let genetics take its course. Townies and dormies are good only for the occasional fling, only playables get to add their genetics to the pool. In my first Pleasantville, Beau Broke married Meadow Thayer, who promptly became invisible, so I have stayed away from that genepool.
I have a number of custom hoods, each started with a storyline in mind. If I can't remember why I started that hood (I don't use the storyline box) then the hood gets deleted.
Free will is important, but so is less stupidity. I spend a lot of time nuking actions that are inappropriate at the time. If bladder and hygiene are equally low, who the hell takes a shower first! I can see the entire lot at most times, with walls cut away, so I can head off that stupid sim before he/she does something permanent
The Director's Cut is an automatic install for me. I use InSim because my sims WILL be happy, whether they like it or not. I did try InTeen for a while, but it borked more than it fixed, and ACR provided the functionality I was looking for. I use Monique's computer, mostly for the express delivery option. testingCheats is rarely on. The College Clock helps me get my YAs through Uni. I use very little CC, because I don't really care what things look like, as long as they work.
My Sims rarely leave home, except in pursuit of their occupation. The time warp involved with community lots usually requires a fair amount of micromanagement to overcome.
notveryawesome:
Quote from: Hecubus on 2007 July 18, 01:01:49
- are you more into building lots, decorating lots, creating sims, or playing families?
All of the above. I really enjoy setting up new custom neighbourhoods and building/decorating lots, but I also enjoy creating sims and playing families. It mostly depends on my mood.
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- lots: do you play highly decorated, with walls up/cutaway, with a focus on 'whoever has the most toys wins"? Or do you play barely decorated, walls down, with a focus on interractions/spawning?
I like my lots to be nicely decorated, and tend to play with cutaway walls (unless I'm taking photos, and then I try to have walls up, when possible), but I don't go overboard with the decorative objects unless the environment score is especially low in a particular area or room.
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- is genetics your thing? Do you like watching spawns, and spawns of spawns for how they turn out? Or do you barely get through one generation before you're off to the next family?
Whilst I do find sim-genetics interesting, I am easily bored, so I usually don't make it past the 2nd or 3rd generation. I do play my lots/families in loose rotation (as long as the sims are in the correct lifestage when I'm done playing a particular lot, I don't really care how many days I've played it).
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- do you build lots of hoods, or have you been playing one or two hoods forever?
At the moment, I only play SarahMK's combined hood and a sci-fi/cyberpunk-themed hood, as well as a mostly empty testhood, though in the past I've had up to 5 custom hoods going at once, as well as the original 3 Maxis-made hoods.
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- in terms of what your sims do: are you into relationships and interractions, or are you more into how they skill and climb the corporate ladders?
I try to balance the two. Mostly, however, it depends on the sims' aspirations. Popularity, family, and romance sims are usually more interested in building relationships, whilst fortune and knowledge sims are more interested in skilling and progressing their careers.
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- do you play lots of community lots, or are your sims homebodies?
My sims tend to be homebodies (as I am), but I'm slowly changing this, especially when they're at uni. Again, this depends on aspiration.
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-city/country/suburban?
This depends on my mood and whether I'm playing a particular theme. My cyberhood, for example, is mostly desert and concrete, whilst the Victorian-themed hood I used to have was more rural.
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- do you do themes? (aliens, medieval, Victorian)
Aside from the above-mentioned sci-fi/space/cyberpunk and Victorian themes, I've also done fantasy/faerietale, medieval, and Asian themes. I'm thinking of restarting the Asian theme as a subhood of one of my current neighbourhoods, as it was a lot of fun building, decorating, and populating that one.
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- do you play with pets?
It depends on the family and other things happening on the lot (and how much patience I have). Home-business lots do not tend to have pets, because the combination is too hectic. Also, I generally tend to only give pets to family sims and sims with high interest in animals, though not always. Sometimes I give pets for realism (my self-sim has sim versions of my RL cats) or for storytelling purposes.
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- do you do the vamp/werewolf/alien/zombie thing, or are you more a 'real person' player?
This depends on the neighbourhood. For example, anything goes in my cyberhood, but a fantasy or medieval hood would not be allowed to have aliens, or even servos, for that matter.
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- hacks: do you like to make life simpler or harder? insim? inteen?
This depends. Some of my hacks make things easier, mainly to eliminate personal annoyances of mine, such as permanently-clean petfood dishes, whilst others make life harder (expensive NPCs). I use the InSim object edition. I do not use InTeen.
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-custom content: lots or a little? what do you have the most of?
Everything in moderation. I currently have just over 3 GB of CC. In the past, I've had as much as 12 or 13 GB. This is mainly why I no longer have so many themed hoods. I tend to collect furnishings and Build Mode stuff, but care little for clothing or hair (unless it fits a theme).
Edit: I just remembered that I recently culled a lot of stuff from my Downloads folder, so I actually have 1.7 GB of CC, not 3 GB, as I thought.
MattyDienhoff:
- are you more into building lots, decorating lots, creating sims, or playing families?
Probably an equal measure of all four. I love building houses but I also love running and manipulating sim's lives. Sometimes I spend a lot of time in all the different households, running their lives, other times I just build and end up with empty houses scattered around the neighborhood with no one living in them.
- lots: do you play highly decorated, with walls up/cutaway, with a focus on 'whoever has the most toys wins"? Or do you play barely decorated, walls down, with a focus on interractions/spawning?
Um, a bit of both.
- is genetics your thing? Do you like watching spawns, and spawns of spawns for how they turn out? Or do you barely get through one generation before you're off to the next family?
Not really, I go from one household to the next very quickly so none of the family trees are very long yet, one or two generations at the most. I've never done a legacy.
- do you build lots of hoods, or have you been playing one or two hoods forever?
Lots of hoods. Along with Pleasantview, it's sub-hoods (Bluewater Village and Downtown) and Strangetown, I have a few custom neighborhoods.
Southport, which uses the "sample" terrain template and is a fairly well established coastal town. (I started this neighborhood a year ago, at least)
Portsmouth, which uses a terrain I designed in SC4, is an industrial district I'm still working on (it's still kind of empty) but there's low-income housing, a few abandoned warehouses and offices, a pawn shop, and a used car yard. And I've got plans in the works for a shipyard, among other things. I used neighborhood decorations like cooling towers and a monorail to add to the industrial atmosphere and the 'hood is built on the 'dirt' terrain which looks the part. My idea is some of the abandoned warehouses could be converted into shops by enterprising sims, so I guess you consider it a sort of urban renewal project.
Evandale, based on the "Driftwood" terrain template. The name is just a placeholder until I think of something better and this is basically just the empty spot where I've been building houses and there are only a few families living there now, but I'm planning to move some more in soon.
- in terms of what your sims do: are you into relationships and interractions, or are you more into how they skill and climb the corporate ladders?
A bit of both.
- do you play lots of community lots, or are your sims homebodies?
They mostly stay at home but they occaisionally go out to dinner or hang out at the local pool, stuff like that.
- city/country/suburban?
All of the above. :)
- do you do themes? (aliens, medieval, Victorian)
Not really... Well, I do sometimes build castles and I built a space station of sorts once.
- do you play with pets?
Sometimes, yes.
- do you do the vamp/werewolf/alien/zombie thing, or are you more a 'real person' player?
Most of my sims are just sims, but I get a kick out of the supernatural stuff occaisionally and I often play aliens in Strangetown.
- hacks: do you like to make life simpler or harder? insim? inteen?
I use InSim a fair bit.
- custom content: lots or a little? what do you have the most of?
A fair bit of furniture and a few custom cars, but mostly hacks.
- and finally, if you share your creations...what do you create?
I occaisionally share lots I create. Once I built a massive castle and that was well-received, I might build another one sometime soon, because I have a lot more tools to do it with now.
Zazazu:
Yay! Gen 11 of my Alphabet family, and I've finally bred the pinnochio nose that I accidentally married in first generation out of the male line.
Khan of Wyrms:
-are you more into building lots, decorating lots, creating sims, or playing families?
Building lots, sub-'hoods, creating families to populate them, not so much decorating or playing, but some. One of the best things about building is finding out just how well the lot works when played, so all lots get at least a small amount of play time. Mostly only playing enough to get certain family members to particular career levels or certain states of existence. (i.e. Vampire, zombie, ghost, werewolf, no plantsims yet) I have a few families/sims that I have played quite a bit, but most are just neighborhood filler, like custom townies who own houses. Names are key for me, for some peculiar reason. If a sim or family has an interesting or clever name then they may get more playing time.
What I really wish for is a sort of halfway point between SC4 and TS2, where I could play from the neighborhood screen, perhaps, and all of the families could go about their business without as much micromanagement. Maybe turn-based...oh, well...
- lots: do you play highly decorated, with walls up/cutaway, with a focus on 'whoever has the most toys wins"? Or do you play barely decorated, walls down, with a focus on interractions/spawning?
Decoration depends mostly on the lot and sometimes available funds, and I normally play with partial or complete cutaway. I have shacks and trailers, and I have mansions and veritable castles, and everything in between.
- is genetics your thing? Do you like watching spawns, and spawns of spawns for how they turn out? Or do you barely get through one generation before you're off to the next family?
I can spend hours in CAS creating a family, cross-breeding and then deleting whole generations, experimenting. If I have a really good surname I want well represented, the family will come out with the maximum number of members and often several generations down the line. This can make somewhat large character files as the new sims carry a lot of genetic information sometimes, but eh.
- do you build lots of hoods, or have you been playing one or two hoods forever?
I play one custom hood, Idylleville, that I started shortly after University was released. It received an infusion of sims and lots from all three mEAxis 'hoods, but mostly from Strangetown, to get things rolling. (Yes, in what is supposed to be a VBT sort of way, if it matters, that was 4 XP's and 2 SP's ago.) Idylleville has five downtown, four shopping, and two university districts attached to the main 'hood, so far. Sub-'hood terrains were reconciled with each other in SC4 so that the borders mesh and general compass-point relationships could be established, mostly for street naming and addressing lots.
- in terms of what your sims do: are you into relationships and interractions, or are you more into how they skill and climb the corporate ladders?
Aspiration is key to what individual sims do, although Idylleville has a preponderance of 'knowledge' sims, since it fits the general theme of the neighborhood. Sometimes individuals break the mold, though, like one romance-sim I had created in Uni-CAS back about the time of Nightlife who had the unusual lifetime aspiration to be a 'Mad Scientist'.
- do you play lots of community lots, or are your sims homebodies?
Some of both but less on community lots, depending upon circumstances, although downtown and shopping sub-'hoods are mostly places for more lots and more sims to live. Community lots are scattered throughout the realm.
-city/country/suburban? do you do themes? (aliens, medieval, Victorian)
City+suburban describes it best, although there are some remote locations. Theme is modern, Lovecraftian-mystery realm...-ish, or what TS2 is.
- do you play with pets?
Occasionally, but I find they are generally too needy and too stupid and not enough fun. Mostly for lonely sims or lots with just a few other residents. Normally never more than eight characters on a lot, sims+pets.
- do you do the vamp/werewolf/alien/zombie thing, or are you more a 'real person' player?
Definitely do vamp/werewolf/alien/zombie thing. Without them I might not even be playing still, and I always want/need more. I also have daemons, devils, faeries, and Olde Ones.
- hacks: do you like to make life simpler or harder? insim? Inteen?
I use just a few hacks/mods, and almost none that make the game easier, with the exception of Smonaff's 'jealousy check' for the non-committed. I have a few JMP mods, a few TJ mods, a couple of Smonaff mods, and the 'non-awesome (TM)' Hack Which Must Not Be Named. Generally, I view game annoyances as part of the playing of the game and I would not generally want anything to make the game any easier than it already is.
-custom content: lots or a little? what do you have the most of?
I own a sizable collection of skins, hairs, and genetics, since this is not an area that I play around with much at all.
- and finally, if you share your creations...what do you create?
I don't typically share, since I don't normally make anything except lots and sims. My 'hoods are largely unique terrain and lots are mostly uneven, plus I don't usually make sims in Bodyshop, so not much opportunity there, either. I do look forward to more building contests here, and will likely contribute in this manner in the future.
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