But having read this time scaling idea, I can see how the Maxis system is logical in itself. If we go ahead and say Neighborhood time is 1:365 (or something like that, since the average age of a Sim is about 71 game days, and Human beings live for close to that amount, but in YEARS), then popping out for a night's entertainment really is a non-event. So, yeah, I can live with the built-in time behavior, now that I understand what's happening. The problem is, the different time scales aren't properly indicated when they're in effect, so everyone just assumed (like I did) that time was constant, and that Maxis was cheating by giving back the hours we spent on the community lots.
So how is Sneaking out logical? Does the sim do this every night for a year?
The problem for me is comm lot skilling. I can send a sim out for 18 hours and they can skill for most of that time before heading home exhausted. Some food, coffee,a piss and shower later, and off they can go off to another lot for more skilling. Commmunity Time makes it feel less like cheating.
For the most part, I don't try to scale sims to RL. It's a game. Sims have very short lives.