I prefer custom Sims. Premade Sims tend to become custom Sims eventually anyway, if only because I re-create them whenever SimHampton has to be rebuilt.

I'm equally fond of both. Pre-made sims come with pre-made drama and are less easy to play. They're also very different from the sims I tend to create - and that's fun. What I really like is seeing how the different households (CAS or Maxis) interact with each other.

I love playing with premades, each family has it's own unique story that you have to complete. I don't have to make up a complete storyline because usually if I already have a begininng to the story, I can easily make up the rest and go with it. Custom sims are different and one of my absolute favorite and best storyline I had was with my custom sims, but I spend way too much time on making a sim and perfecting their outfits and looks so it's a bit annoying. Overall I love both but it's been about 3 weeks since I restarted my game and I don't have a single custom sim, I'm gonna make one soon though for my storyline

When I first played TS2 10 years ago, I played custom sims all the time and wasn't very interested in the premade sims or neighbourhoods. I played Pleasantview and Belladonna Cova a bit, but I mostly stuck to my custom sims.

Then TS3 came out and I played that... and you kind of had to play premade sims then (or at least play a premade neighbourhood) and I started to discover all the things I could do with them.

Now I'm back playing TS2... and it's been premades all the way. I've been playing Strangetown, and the only custom sims I've made have been parents and grandparents for Francis J. Worthington III.

I only like a few premades. Other than them, I make my own sims.

Sometimes, I REALLY don't like how the premades look but their story is nice enough, so I redo them in a different neighborhood. (Pretty much what I did with Veronaville, oops)

Always custom sims. I say if you are gonna have a sandbox game, go all out!

I've made his family too! I've also made a family for Guy Wrightley. They're "old money", but they're warm and down-to-earth, as opposed to the Worthingtons, who have a fair amount of angst going on. Francis I doesn't like Francis III's wife (Jasmine Rai) because he's racist and classist while Francis III refuses to intervene when either of them go after each other, Francis III's mom is a selfish idiot having an on-and-off again affair with Jason Cleveland... actually, that's about it, but it seemed like more to me!

Back on topic, I like both. I like premades because it's like a writing prompt and pushes me in directions I wouldn't otherwise go- I don't think I could make myself set up a situation like the Beakers and Nervous, for example! And though sometimes they're too cartoony for my taste, I tend to get in ruts with facial sculpts, so it's nice to not have a neighborhood full of pretty people like my game's a Hollywood TV show. I'm also attached to the Sims 1 sims, so I wanted to continue on with their stories... even if Maxis made decisions I wouldn't have made.

(I couldn't believe they made Cassandra a Family sim as opposed to Knowledge, and I think she would've been Knowledge if her mother hadn't been abducted. Has anyone else noticed a pattern of sim girls and women unhappy with their homes with the Family aspiration? Ophelia's parents died and she had to go live with Crazy Aunt Olive, Juliette and Hermia's parents died and they have to live with their cold-hearted grandfather, again, Cassandra's mom got abducted by aliens.... The only male sim I can think of like that is John Burb. If you ever played his parents in Sims 1, you knew there was trouble right around the corner! I can't believe Maxis didn't give him a memory of them divorcing for Sims 2!)

I like my custom families, too. There's this family in my Victorian game, the Bannisters, that's lodged their way into my heart, and I feel like I can't explain what makes me love them so much, but I'll try. The dad, Col. George, was in the military and his kids wouldn't dare disobey him, but he's got such a big, soft heart, and he cares so much about his family and wants his daughters to get an education even though, again, they're Victorian. The oldest daughter, Edith, was the one who stayed strongest emotionally when the kids' mom (George's wife) died. She's not great academically, but I feel like she's got self-confidence and is down-to-earth. The next daughter, Ellen, is the pretty one. She's a Romance sim who can't wait to turn eighteen and put her hair up and be wooed by handsome men. At the same time, she's very religious (in a genuine way, not a judgmental way) and struggles to keep her urges in check, which isn't easy for a Victorian girl. Then there are the two boys, fourteen-year-old George Henry and ten-year-old Daniel. George Henry's a little stuffy, and in my first version of the neighborhood seemed asocial. At the same time, he wanted to find out what it was like to be in love, so he flirted a little bit with his childhood friend Lady Briony, and they got red hearts. But neither one of them really showed much interest in romance after that. Daniel is slowly growing up, from the little boy who was always being read to (George and especially George Henry were always pulling out books from the bookshelves) to a more social kid. It's like he was shy when he was younger and became more outgoing.

But there's this one family in my retro 'hood, the Loudons, who seem to defy any attempt I make to understand their personalities. They're just kind of like blobs, which is too bad, because I kind of understand their two daughters, and they're an important family in that they're the only people in town who sell fish and produce (they own a grocery store).

I also like my custom retro Downtown, New Amsterdam City. It's my first really big city I've tried to make, and though there's still stuff to do (the immigration area, the colleges, and I NEED a synagogue!), I really love the feel of it. So in this case, it's a combination of different parts of town (The Devil's Boilerroom, Goldtrout Bay, Elliot Heights, Snobchester), the buildings and businesses (for some reason I love playing my little deli!), and the characters that you wouldn't find in Smalltown USA- sleazy Thelonius Shyster, never seen without a cigarette in his mouth and always in need of a shave, Maxwell Calvada, the well-read gang leader, Lina Santiago, the wannabe actress who spends more than she should and is naively believing that her big break is around the corner (and is absolutely not based on Dina Caliente ), the Firefly brothers, two of which are policemen- one is very serious about his job and can get too rough with suspects and criminals, the other is a corrupt womanizer and likes to hang out at speakeasies, etc. I feel like I wouldn't be able to do this in my Megahood.

That's about all I can think of right now.

I tend to play premades nowadays, but when I started playing (and for several years) I mostly played custom sims. I enjoyed playing challenges, especially the Build A City Challenge, with custom sims. I also played some legacies and some prosperity challenge neighbourhoods.

Nowadays I almost solely play premade neighbourhoods, either with no added custom sims, or with custom sims who are related to playable/townies/NPC's. For example, in Peni Griffin's Widespot I made the NPC cashier playable and created parents and a younger sister in CAS for her. I would also like to make Skip Broke's sister Ruby the next time I play Pleasantview, and possibly some of Kaylynn Langerak's relatives as well. And I sometimes create or download relatives (parents and/or siblings, sometimes grandparents) for YA premades.

I currently prefer playing premades because I enjoy sharing my experiences with them with other simmers, and reading about how other people played them and what happened to them in other people's games. I especially enjoy reading about Widespot and its sims :-)

A back story is just a back story - the future of the Sims depend on the player anyway. And what is a plot without twists or turns???? I think I like the bin Sims because my own created Sims are normally far too nice! And the townies - what is a game without Kennedy Cox hitting and shoving (or being hit and shoved by) other Sims? What is a game without Goopy charming everyone off their feet or pretty looking Meadow Futa growing up into a assertive iron lady? How would my Sims have looked without the beauty of Tina Traveller and the handsome traits of Isaiah Gavigan? Who would my Sims blabber too about sport and computers without the AL social groups? And how could they go around without bumping into Mrs Crumplebottom or the evergreen garden club members? Who would teach my Sims Tai Chi if I don't bring in some BV teens and send them through Uni? Who is going to marry all the normal twins and alien twins in my hood if not for townies? Who would be making the medicine if not for mad scientists like Phil Jitsemakol and Alvin Futa?

Depends on end goal for me. I consider townies and NPCs as BOTH playables/custom. Playable in the sense that they're pre created and no time involved in setting anything up as the more you play the more they autonomously create their own back story. It's when the become full on playable that I consider them custom because where they go from there is a blank slate up to the whim of the player.

There are certain times though that I will make a sim( or in my case download one) because conditions call for a certain role that I can't fill with townies because the current selection doesn't fit the idea I have in my head. A prime example of this is canon Dina in my hoods while a gold digger in the sense that she does jump from wealthy man to wealthy man but does it to further her own business enterprises thereby bringing something to the table of the marriage she also lacks competition. I don't necessarily mean someone else who is vying for the attention of all the rich men I mean someone who can knock her down a peg or two both mentally, ethically, and if given the chance physically (cuz who doesn't love a good catfight). So to fill that void I go back through and try to remember the general consensus of what those men or the men in general were attracted to and sculpt a physical appearance character from that and somewhat guide interactions to where I would need it to be. That character takes on a life of it's own the larger his/her social group is and the involvement in town story lines goes.

Though of course in Dina's case she doesn't have to try hard to make female enemies in any of the hood iterations I've tried. She just doesn't like female friends

I've loved playing Strangetown over & over, just because of everyone's backstories. I even read Wiki for more info, and played everyone accordingly. In others, everything got switched up, Nervous and Pascal became a couple, or Nervous killed his captors and became an evil witch and attacked every women he could. And then their were the alien babies...
But in Veronaville, I just had to make fairies and other super-naturals - some with extreme personalities. I even have a CC hood, the "beginnings of Pleasantview" - but it's lots of WORK to play everyone as scripted!

Which is why this game is fun; I can play one hood with strict clothes, housing, and behavior "rules", but go to another hood when I just want to torture people or let them run amok.

Usually I'd only play custom, but after my latest reinstall and losing all my own custom Sims, I decided to just download the mega-hood and use a mix of the pre-made Sims and custom ones.

I used to always play either a premade neighborhood with only premade sims or a custom neighborhood with only custom sims, but now I'm thinking about setting a Pleasantview + Strangetown megahood, and create some custom sims to drop in there and mix everything up, I'll see what happens but the idea sounds fun.

I like the premades because of all the backstory they come with, and I like custom sims because sometimes it gets tiring to play accordingly to the premades backstory, and with them you can just play the game with no worries of something happening that you didn't intended to.

I like to mix and match. I like to have my custom Sims introduce their own drama into the premade neighborhoods.

When I play a pre-made neighbourhood, I always start by creating at least one family of my own. Then, in the company of "my own" Sims, I can get to know the pre-mades. Maybe I trust my own Sims more.