Definitely on. And preferably hands off versus micromanaging. (When I catch myself micromanaging ~ again ~ I stop myself.) My experience is that interesting, funny or drama things happen mostly when you just let them decide a lot of things on their own. If I want to control them, I easily can cancel a certain action to replace it with something I had in mind. I never even have played with free will off. It's not for me. I would grow bored very quickly.

Since I play a historical TO-THE-MAX-MAX-MAX game, this decision is made for me in the early stages of history. My prehistoric ape sims have to discover language before most of the social interactions are unlocked. Once that happens, I'll leave free will on, but survival is difficult at the early stages, when needs have to be managed very carefully. Before medicine is unlocked, an ape sim who gets sick is likely to die (I play with the real illness mod), so they have to keep their needs up as high as possible. Since the only way they can keep warm is by tending and maintaining their fire, and they still have to find time to gather food, mate and try to advance technologically, I micromanage them to the point that free will might as well be off- I just keep it on so that their personalities can show up a bit in their odd moments of leisure- like Moonwatcher in 2001: A Space Odyssey (the book). When he lies down at night with his belly full for the first time, he starts wondering about things...

The more advanced my sims get, the less I have to micromanage them and the more their personalities are allowed to shine through. That makes sense to me, though- after all, it's consistent with how people's life experience has changed as survival has become easier- if I didn't live in the early 21st century I doubt very much that obsessively playing a game from ten years ago would occur to me, for example...

I keep it on always, but I make frequent use of the pause button. I also cancel actions I don't want such as poking.

I have always, as long as I remember, played free will off. I just dislike it how they start doing stupid things without my permission. I just like to keep things under control.

Nowadays I'm trying to learn to play with free will on, actually... and it's quite fun. I'm always itching to control them but then I'm like ''oh nevermind'' and try to let them do their own things. And yeah, it's easy to cancel the things they're gonna do with something else.

It's a nice change to the game when after all these years you play free will on suddenly, haha.

Always on. I don't understand how the game would be fun with it off, you'd have to control their every action all the time or they would starve. And I like surprises and unexpected funny things!

In my case, it may also have something to do with the fact that I've only ever played with a big family once in my entire life. The Tarrel family (it was so memorable that I have a folder of pictures, with that family alone. No other families). I admit it was difficult and I took advantage of the pause button quite a lot, to make sure no one were ever just standing around. I suppose it all comes down to how much of a raging control freak you are ~guilty~.

Although!

Since I started reading and posting on this forum, I've been very tempted to allow my sims their free will, as I've read about people's sims doing things I had never experienced a sim do before. Just to try it out. I think I would get too stressed though, if my sim needed one friend to get promoted, a sim is walking by my sims house, I have free will on.... and then my sim goes to play the piano, even though their creativity skill is full and their hygiene is much further down than their fun. I'm breathing heavily just thinking about it right now.

I think I'd do nothing except cancel the free will actions to replace with my own anyway, which would defeat the purpose. So I guess gameplay choices depends on player personality. I will force myself to try it one of these days, though!

Well, if you have free will on, that doesn't mean that you ALWAYS have to let Sims do whatever they want all the time. You can still queue up actions for them. I do. So with your example, there's nothing that says that you can't cancel the "go play the piano" action and instead direct them to interact with the walkby. It's just that, with free will on, if you've got nothing queued up for them, they'll do something that attracts their attention or they'll do things to take care of their motives themselves. And there are some things that they can do that are autonomous-only, that you can't direct them to do and that you will never see unless you have free will turned on. (Like really neat Sims going around washing windows or children rubbing their feet on rugs and then going off and giving a sibling a shock as a prank.) And sure, sometimes they will do stupid/annoying things...which you can nuke with hacks, if you want to. There are all sorts of "No Autonomous 'X'" mods out there.

That said, I'm not trying to be a "free will evangelist" or something. I'm just saying that if you never turn free will on you are, IMO, missing a number of charming things about the game. Although of course charming is in the eye of the beholder. I, personally, love a lot of the "stupid" things that Sims do, while they totally annoy a lot of other people. Which, like I said, is why "no autonomous" hacks are good.

Exactly! I'd love to see things like that. I do have quite a few anti-autonomous-this-and-that hacks, but that's mostly because I don't need all my customers outside, throwing water balloons during the winter when I'm running a business.

I do plan to try it (once I completed the last Borderlands DLC's with my current character). The reason I never experience them just standing around with free will off, is that I'm not only a dictator and a control freak... I'm a stalker, lol. My sims never have a private moment. I am over them like caramel in the roof of your mouth 24/7, so in the way my gaming style has evolved, free will has only been a nausiance and until I came on this forum, I didn't know that there were certain things that sims could only do while on free will.

When you decide to give it a try, you might want to do something like an Asylum Challenge, wherein you can control only one member of the household. That way, you can really heavily control one and try not to care about the others, just seeing what they do and how they handle themselves. This would also help you to decide which behaviors you don't want your playables to be able to do in terms of other no-autonomous hacks you might want to track down.

Believe me, I can understand controlling them a lot. I mean, I would play large families and I'd pause the game, queue up a group of them, and let the others do as they will, then let the first group do their queued stuff, then pause again, queue up the next group, and so on. But I think the more I played (and the more I modded, so that the pixels behaved more as I want them to behave), the more I was able to let go and let them show me who they were, in a sense. I became much more attached to them that way than I did with me constantly telling them what to do. It made the game more enjoyable. For me, anyway. You might find that you hate it...but you'll never know unless you try. And if you do hate it, you can always go back to playing like you always did, no harm no foul.

If I want my sim to greet a passerby and they go play piano I just cancel piano and click on passer by. Free will on doesn't mean no direction. Some People micro manage a lot and some only a little. After the sim has greeted the passerby I may decide to watch awhile though and see what they decide to do. One of my sims who has a bad reputation is quite likely after she has greeted them to poke them in the chest. She is a maid at my mayors house so she doesn't have any friendship needs. I don't have many mods to stop them doing things either, I like to see what they choose to do. This is one reason I put on a double age mod, so they and I could have more free time so their lives were less about promotions and skills.

I never laughed so much as I did playing an asylum challenge. It helps when you play with free will on to know what objects have strong coding. So in an asylum challenge you would not want to place an exercise bike unless you really want many deaths. Sims are very attracted to it and once on tend to stay on. If you want to see break downs place a karaoke machine because they always seem to have fears related to it but it also attracts sims. make sure the bin (trash can) is accessible to inmates and at least one will probably go raid it for food. You would also want to give them lots of room in the kitchen so they can run around crazily when you get a fire and double doors so if you have rung for the fire brigade that they can get in.

I don't see any reason to force yourself to play a certain way. You can always look up "let's plays" that run with free will on and see these behaviors.

I believe there are, or have been, people on this board who used the game to help them develop coping methods for actual OCD, so if you think you have real-life control issues that need addressing you could certainly use it as a resource - but that's the only reason I can think of to try to talk yourself into playing in a style you have no reason to think you would enjoy.

If you think you might and want to experiment, though, remember that there is no law that says you have to play every household or neighborhood in the same way all the time. You could designate one house in which you almost exclusively free-range, another in which free will is on but you micromanage - and in both, you have the option to quit without saving, or abort the experiment and change the rules, if it isn't fun. You could have a completely separate "free will neighborhood," which you only play in certain moods. Or play free will in one household per rotation (if you play rotations). Or leave the kids on free will all the time and only control adults. Or -

Why not?

On because i can't be bothered telling them to go and do everything lol plus they do some random things that make me laugh, they can suprise you when you least expect it so it's better to keep it on. Just keep watch them outside when it's winter and when out in the sun and also when it starts thundering, they tend to want to jump in puddles but don't let them unless it's not thundering because they will get electricuted in the puddles and don't let them get too cold or too hot, that's the only times you have to keep them doing stuff inside.

on always. Sims aren't the brightest, but I have hacks to moderate the worst behavior and I also try to arrange the enviornment to account for their stupidity: like no computers, radios, or televisions in the bedrooms, group actitivities and most of the fun stuff in common spaces to encourage socialization among family memebers. my game is definitely more fun and more entertaning with free will on. And I don't just mean reckless or thoughtless things that sims will do that ruins their lives, but them just building up their relationships with their families on their own or shy sims hiding out in the back while everyone socializes, or child age sims that randomly play with their toddler sims and then torment them. for the most part free will makes me a happy simmer.

I like it they aren't (always) the sharpest knives in the drawer. It gives me a lot of entertainment what they can do to themselves to confirm that again.
For example: a female sim trying to seduce the boyfriend of her sister, getting rejected majorly and then do it once again to be rejected firmly for a second time, lol. She was living with them for god sakes. 'Smart' way to not only embarrass yourself to a square, but you might get kicked out of the house, 'missy'.

hehe guess it's more accurate to real life then, i've probably showed myself up about a dozen times when i didn't mean to but sometimes your brain is just like "what the hell... skip the logic".

I can relate to that. Even when knowing better (in hindsight) I have done stuff that could suggest I'm not all that smart as well at times. Usually I blame it on being too impulsive. Reacting before thinking, going by emotions which got the better of me.

I'm the worst when i'm tried or when there is too many people around, i don't like too many people chatting around me so it's a problem when i go places because i can't think, so i just end up getting overwhelmed and have the urge to go do something reckless lol.

Haha, someone or something definitely has left free will on with you and doesn't micromanage you then :P

haha i just always get the urge to take flight because i remembered why i don't like too many people around, i just think "can i go punch something now?" lol because i pick up on peoples vibes really easy so i can feel how many people want to punch something too.

On, always on, since that is imo the only way to appreciate a Sim