Just wondering, what does everyone else do with their elders? Kill them off? Leave them in a family bin or some lot and never play them? Have them live with their relatives until they die?

I used to move them in with their relatives (though the often took up too much precious space ) or if they didn't have any, and they still had a while until they die of old age plus a family aspiration (and sometimes knowledge or something like that too), have them adopt another kid. This made playing more fun.

But seeing many retirement homes on MTS and other sites, I started playing differently. Right now, I have Oldies and Goodies living together in a house, I plan to also move in Olive Specter eventualy, and Dora Ottomas after the youngest Ottomas kids grow up a little. Not exactly a retirement home but a retirement community or something. They all have part time jobs, and they also do different things at home - garden, paint, and I plan to make them create different stuff. That way, they keep themselves busy and earn some extra money Maybe they can even open up their own business some time! They're actually quite fun to play this way.

I play the stuffings out of them, because elders are awesome! I don't understand why people think you have to play them different. They are the exact same sims you were playing as adults, so why should they be played differently?

Mary Munny kept right on touring, dating twice a day, throwing parties in between, going on vacations with her son and grandchildren (whom she did her best to spoil), educating young men, and generally being a rock goddess to the hilt till the day she died. Goz Hawkins kept right on dating his wife, giving woohoo ed lectures, raising his kids and grandkids, and occasionally breaking into other people's houses to take care of crying toddlers. His widow Kitty Hawkins is still raising her grandkids, meddling in the lives of all nine of her children, and originating dirty jokes. Livva Ann Onions's last act on earth was to go shopping after a day spent gardening and training her dog. Her husband Red is Chief of Staff at Drama Acres Community Hospital and is the resident expert on alien hybrids. Their daughter Sage Ann Munny has retired from journalism, but she's writing books and has taken up gardening in a big way. Sage Ann's husband Ernest is still overseeing his mining conglomerate, romancing Sage Ann, and keeping the dogs clean. Greg and Ben Aerius still run party central on their days off. Sadie Point is coaching the Lllamettes, Clovis Point is in the Hall of Fame and mentoring young athletes, their twins have only just started elementary school, and they still woohoo each other at least once a day and have periodic cheating fight-and-make-up days. Not to mention Clovis's running feud with his brother-in-law...

And that's just the ones in Drama Acres. We won't go into what the ones in Widespot get up to!

Normally one of the kids moves back home to raise their own family in the family home which is great for them as they have built in baby sitters. Other elders might move themselves to a smaller home or the retirement home. I am using my retirement home to bring in elder townies. Most just keep on doing whatever it was they were doing the day before they turned elder. I do use elders sleep all night, no elder bladder decay and no age discrimination for jobs. They only retire when they have the want to retire. Apart from no pregnancy risks elders can do anything that adults can do.

It depends on their social class; royal, noble or patrician elders are some of the most powerful people in Heimlichbourg-- poorer ones often find themselves farmed out to work as servants or governesses.

They either take care of grandkids, breed dogs, have award winning gardens, pursue hobbies or own businesses after retirement or even during their golden years as they continue working toward their aspirations.

This ^
I don't really play them any differently, by the time they're a few days from becoming an elder they're usually done baby-making, and really that's the only difference between them and adults (and the faster decaying motives). They continue raising their children (usually teens, but sometimes later parents have a mixture of teens, children and toddlers) - all sims settle down or have at least one child, and usually the youngest (or last to get married) doesn't move out so grandparents just means extra money from jobs or a babysitter so both parents can work without having to call a nanny.

The Goodies in the family-bin really annoy me though, because I like ALL my sims to have descendants of some form otherwise I just feel like that family was a bit of a waste because after they're dead - that's it. I use to make them adopt a few babies, but then I feel bad because by the time the oldest is a teen, they usually die so in more recent neighbourhoods I age them down and let them have children. In my current hood, I wanted to add a university so I needed some university sims - so I aged them into adults, made them have children (Dolly and Tiffany Goodie), aged their children to teens and aged them to elders again, send the kids off to college, and move the Goodies into a nice little apartment next door to Dora Ottomas and her 2 cats - Noodle and Hatbox. They wont remain there forever, just for a little bit of time until their youngest, Tiffany, finishes university.

I'm with Peni Griffin on this as well. I play them the same as adult sims. If they owned a business as an adult, they continue managing that business as elders as well. Then when they become very old (I add more and more wrinkles as time goes by), they pass the business on to one of their family members, or a faithful employee if the elder never had children.

They go on vacations, they tend to their hobbies, they go to the park, they tend their gardens. My only real problem is that sometimes, I have accomplished everything with them by the time they become elders. Maxed all skills, unlocked all holiday memories, completed one or more lifetime wants etc. In which case, I admit I just pass time with them until they die, simply because I have nothing else to do with them. I will make an old folks home for them soon though. Not everyone has family to live with.

If you find that happening too much you could put on a slower skilling and badge mod.

Mine usually live in small homes or apartments and persue hobbies and live out the rest of their lives happy and with family. Some do stay with their childred and descendants tho. I make it that when they really start to age they move into a old age home for their final years.

I already have a few mods that makes badges harder to achieve (except for the cashier badge, that one already takes 10 times longer than the others). As for slower skilling, I think the 'problem' lies in me spending an excessive amount of time on it, so with such a mod, I would probably just... spend even more time on it and the end result would be the same. I'm alright with it, though.

I find elders a fun lifestage just like all the others - I think people find it a boring stage sometimes because they can't get pregnant and have children anymore and that's a big part of gameplay for most people. I also think you're more likely to enjoy playing sims as elders if you've played/created those sims yourself and played them through their lives, or at least through adulthood - this way you already have a sense of their personality.

My elder sims stay a lot like their adult selves and keep the same hobbies. But because most of my elders do retire, it's nice to get them into gardening, or to let them stay at home with grandchildren and read to them and teach them new skills. My sims usually have a family home where all the family members live, so no Retirement Homes for my elder sims!

I find them more interesting when they have a big family beneath them, I must admit. When you have a just-out-of-CAS elder they can be a little boring and in that case (or if I don't know what to do with them in general) I will put them together in a retirement home, because I love big busy lots with lots going on. But I have solitary/coupled up elders living alone with the occasional visit from a family member, pottering, having company from pets, etc.

I found them more interesting with later EPs where you can really get into their hobbies and such. Not just freetime but the newer things you can do like baking, gardening, etc. But now they don't have children around and their career has slowed or they have retired, it's nice to give them some time to finish up goals they didn't get around to when they were younger.

Bigsimsfan, I think you can give the Goodies offspring with the Tombstone of L&D, and age them up. I always use the testingcheats to give them some randomized skills (no way are two Knowledge sims getting to that age with no skills!), and this would be easy to do at the same time.

When I got a critical mass of townies in Drama Acres who had been involved in the story enough for me to age them as far as elder, I built Townie Hall, moved in the Goodies, and added six townie elders who needed to get old enough to die. I used SimPE to give them back the jobs they'd had as adults, if I knew them, and then let most of them retire (unless they had an LTW career; they may as well get a shot at completing it), so they have a solid base income. I do a lot of free ranging, but have also bought them a couple of businesses, and they have all the badge stations. Since townies get random badges, they're about to open a first-class toy store! It's a hotbed of love affairs, gossip, and strip mahjong. Since one reason to be involved enough in the Drama Acres storyline for me to do this to them is participation in the Romance numbers game, caught cheating events are frequent, whether they're going out or having friends over. And eventually the place will be haunted.

Edit: Now you see, they could put tongue-in-cheek sci-fi options like this in the game, but instead they'll just re-tread vampires, witches and werewolves again for the third time for TS4.
Another reason EA won't get my money.

I never make my elders retire, because I want them to have something to do on the days.
Otherwise I try to make the most of it, entertain them with hobbies, dating, write restaurant guides, work on skills etc

I make my elders retire, go clubbing every other day, take loads of vacations, throw loads of parties & family reunions and basically give them the best memories possible. I love my elder sims so much. One thing I have noticed and I don't know if this is a glitch or a game feature but my elder sims bladder need bars drop so fast.

Pretty sure they're supposed to drop so fast, as elders need to pee more often in real life too But if it's a problem you could get them the aspiration benefit for the bladder need to drop slower (if you have the required EP, not sure which one it is - Freetime maybe?).

Not a glitch. Elders get weaker bladders and their diurnal rhythms change. Which is realistic, so I don't know why people want to go modding it out. But if you don't like it - you can mod it out.

It's never been a problem for me, unless you count the unfortunate results when the vampire ungratefully "bleahed" poor Leslie Gay at the end of a dream date. It made Leslie and me feel not bad at all when the vampire caught her dating the good witch later. Serve you right - a woman gives you the most aspiration points you've ever had in your immortal life, and you repay her by scaring her into wetting herself? Not cool...Um, where was I? Yeah, it just requires an adjustment to the way that character manages her motive resources. It's also why nannies spend so much time in the bathroom. It's not nearly as troublesome as the pregnancy motive-drops though.

Oh no It's not a problem as such but I never noticed it until I started concentrating on my elder Sims more. It's a nice feature and pretty darn endearing. Though I will give that aspiration reward to one of my elders because sometimes It's hard to keep up when there is 4 of them, and one toilet....

Don't you have to be an adult to have offspring via the Tombstone of L&D. Unless you mean spawning babies and linking them to the family tree via the Sim Blender or some other ingame tool? (unless you mean 'age them up' as in aging the Goodies back up, not the children)

As for them being knowledge sims, I like to think that they had different aspirations in adulthood and became knowledge sims when they moved into [insert neighbourhood here] because they plan on 'finding themselves' in this new town (aka skill-building and badge-juicing. Though by the time my sims are adults they usually have at least 1.5 skills maxed and at least a bronze badge, so I guess they must have had a pretty boring life before becoming elders.

I don't really like elders. Another thing that anoyed me is that I hardly ever give parties, go on vacation or go to a community lot due to the work- and schooltimes of my sims.
No I try to combine these two. My elder sims get the option to go living in one my small homes of max. 4 elders.(I don't like big households) They don't have to pay taxes, but can't have a job or business. Because there aren't any residents with work, I can send those households on daily trips, vacations and let them relive their youth by throwing a big pool party. It makes those oldies a lot more interesting to me.

Don't knw. Never tried. Back up your game, and find out.

You'd have to live under a rock your entire life to be an elder with no skills. Even useless spoiled rich people will have points in body or charisma or some damn thing. The only elders I wouldn't cheat points for would be elders with a specific backstory accounting for it, like complete aphasia, or they're simmigrants and the skills they had back home are inappropriate to the new environment. Because cooking on a woodstove with foraged ingredients is a very different skill from cooking on an electric oven with stuff you bought at the grocery store.

Elders serve as really great nanny-alternatives. If you have the elders living with their adult children's families, then they're likely to form a strong bond with the grand kids. Almost all my elders that live with their children are BFFs with their grand kids, something that rarely happens when they live apart. You'll be saving on nannies; you won't have to hire one, unless you your elders didn't retire or acquired new job.

And if you think they're boring, they're not! Take them on a trip to any of the destinations that BV provides. For some reason, I find it difficult to send couples on a vacation during adulthood, but once the kids are out of the house, its much more easier. I've done it several times, only when they roll a want for it, and its quite entertaining to see them finally being able to have some fun after raising their kids and all...

I once took my Wolosenko family on a vacation to Takemizu Village. The 'party' consisted of the parents, grandparents and grandchildren. I bought them a vacation home. The first day was family day. Second was where I took the grandparents on a date. And the third for the adults to have a date of their own too. (Or did the grandparents go on the third day? Can't remember exactly... Anyways; they're great company.)

Family gatherings are extremely important! Make sure you invite the kids and grand kids over during weekends, the house will be full and they'll experience what you experience when you visit your relatives. Family gatherings really help raise the relationships between cousins, uncles, aunts, etc... If your elder(s) live(s) alone, then I think, to make things less boring, that you should create time for family.

My elders run home businesses, breed puppies/kittens or take care of the grandkids. My legacy elders also take care of painting portraits of the family.

Oh, and I put their bedroom/bathroom on the first floor in the house so they can quickly cook breakfast for the kids and grandkids.

My elders do everything they ever did only with fewer consequences.