I've been an avid simmer for well over a decade, and as much as I love the games I am unfortunately running out of ideas. Any fun tips?? Preferably some more unconventional/creative one rather than just exploring a game feature (when I searched Google for ideas I mostly found trying new careers, making sims with certain traits, etc) and it's cool if they have a whole story to them. Things that require a bit of imagination are not just fine but encouraged, I like adding a bunch of extra narrative to what's happening in my head even if the game doesn't have those exact things built in! Things that require mods are also fine, though preferably not too many or too big ones as my computer is kinda lousy so I don't want to make the game any slower than it already is.

I currently have the following EP's installed: Generations, Ambitions, World Adventures, University, Supernatural, Late Night

Mods worth mentioning are MasterController, StoryProgression, Woohooer, and ones that let vampires and werewolves kill people (plus a few more that don't really affect gameplay in meaningful ways that would affect stories)

Thanks in advance, would love to hear your ideas!

Honestly, one thing I can always recommend to people is something as simple as stepping out of your comfort zone in regards to the types of Sims you play. A lot of people tend to want to play the "right" way by maxing out skills for a Sim, leaving them with way too much money to spend, climbing to the top of a career etc. Doing something as small as making Sims with some negative qualities can change up gameplay more than you think.

Also, as far as mods go something that makes everything more challenging, like more realistic wages or more expensive bills, really goes a long way as well in my book to keep the game interesting, as you have a greater feeling of satisfaction working up to a new house or something.

- Tried look up the Challenge sub-forum? Browse around and look for those. Even in TS4 and TS2 child-forums and see how much you can incorperate those under TS3's conditions.
- Try simulating things that sort of don't exist, but with tools or mods provided to create a new thing that leave a meaningful play in. Have you tried establishing court house, or a political system where based on demography distribution set up a presidential candinate iš decide for president by number of Sims with certain personality traits that voted?
- Try playing a whole world in rotational play. Heck, maybe start a bacc?

Do a favorite book, favorite movie, anything.

Yes this! I like having minimal control over my sims- what NRAAS settings & mods work best for that? If there was an ability to force sims to pay their bills autonomously and do a bit more life maintenance on their own, I’m totally down for that.

I prefer essentially playing as the conscience of a sim as it’s a bit more abstract and pliable, and I don’t run into the min-max issues that I often think about otherwise.

After being frustrated with my town going down the path of full matriarchy (Sims trace their ancestry through their mothers, since most male Sims aren't brave enough to marry off their partners, and when they do, they stay Engaged for the rest of their lives without actually tying the knot, (thanks Nraas SP & MC!)), I snapped and decided to handle the romantic affairs of the majority of the Sims in my town. I rotate households every few days so as to marry off all those eternally Engaged Sims, and renovate their homes and finances in the process.

Something I haven't tried, but recreating a world or saves from other Sims game that you played sounds like an interesting concept in theory.

@nitromon oh what do you mean exactly by that? How do you play?

Do you think the old StoryProgression mechanic of randomly moving sims away was a stand-in for this effect?

Honestly rotating sounds kind of interesting as I usually only have one active household per save. I did look at the Challenge sub-forum for some ideas and it did give me a bit of inspiration, though I found that a lot of them were quite similar? A lot of generational stuff, a lot of time period emulators, a lot of "started from the bottom" variations... Not to mention that all the rules are a bit too much for me, haha. Browsing through it just for some general inspiration is nice though, I have been having a bit of fun reading some of those posts.

I actually did once try to change it up by stepping out of my comfort zone by using minimal cheats (pretty much only resetsim if needed) as I normally always give my sims infinite money and static needs as I just cannot be bothered with those things, I'd rather spend my time doing something more fun. So I tried playing more like you're supposed to, by actually taking care of my sim and having a job to make money. It was an interesting challenge and I actually did enjoy it for a bit, but it got old after a few real-life days as I quickly remembered why I started cheating in the first place, haha. When you have to work all day and sleep all night plus eat, shower, and have enough fun to not have the 2d stressed moodlet... Oh boy, you barely have time to do ANYTHING else! After a while I realized how incredibly difficult it was for my sim to find a partner (as I wanted her to get married and procreate - something I also rarely do, I'm not very into the whole family thing) because there was no time to go out and meet people or maintain relationships. I think I will still play some games where my sims have to make their own money (though probably not through rabbithole careers because that's so boring, I'll be self-employed or do Ambitions careers) but I reeaaally cannot cope with having to take care of all the needs, especially sleep, it just takes too long! Anyway, bit of a long anecdote there, just thought about it when you mentioned stepping out of one's comfort zone to change things up.

Sooo I'm thinking of trying out a variety of a repopulation challenge. Not with a bunch of rules and stuff but just some funsies. Since I have World Adventures I figured I can travel abroad to.... import genetics? Don't wanna breed with service sims since they look awful but I think having a town with genetics from all over the world (well, three other countries) could at least keep me occupied for a while, haha. Plus it's a bit different from what I usually do. Somewhat concerned it will cause a corrupt game though as I think some of my mods can cause problems over longer gameplay/many generations but oh well, if it all breaks apart I can just delete it and try something else. Do keep the ideas coming though, more inspiration is always fun!

Lots of us do this in 2

UPDATE: Have been doing this for a little while now and so far so good! I did, as expected, get issues after a while due to some of my mods. By the third generation (grandkids of my starter sim) it all broke apart. Luckily though, I could salvage it, because I hadn't saved in a few sim-days. I quit without saving, deleted the mods in question and reloaded the game. It worked, except a pregnant sim seemed stuck as pregnant. I went into edit town, saved a copy of the household + their house, then started a new save and simply placed the house with the household into the town and it all worked well again. Sooo if anyone else gets their game corrupted by mods, this seems to be a working fix!

The way I decided to go about things is I bought the lifetime reward elixir for my starting sim so that she stopped aging, being forever an adult. I will then use her to partner people up with foreigners - as soon as a kid becomes a teenager, she will move them into her household and take them on a trip to find a partner. I wanted to do this as teenagers (I have mods to allow it) because I worried the game might automatically pair them up with other people so I wanted them to get hitched as quickly as I could Working nicely so far! Already got a lot of grandkids, my two children had 3 and 4 kids respectively and another one is apparently on the way. The oldest grandkid just became a teenager so I've moved him into my household to find him a spouse! Quite enjoying it so far. The only issue really is that since I've chosen to find spouses for them as teenagers, the options are quite limited, at least if they are to date within their own age group. For my son I edited a Chinese child into a teenager to get him a girlfriend, and for my daughter I got her married to a young adult. Still, it's a bit annoying to have to either keep editing foreign sims into teenagers or have age gap relationships to make it work. Buuut it was my own decision to pair them up as teens so whatever. There are very few premade teens in the other countries unfortunately and I think if I move foreigners into my home town there will still be a copy of them in the foreign world so if I were to stick with only teens I'd basically have to make all my sims marry copies of the same handful of foreign teenagers, which is a bit weird for my taste.

Sooo about that, is there a way to make more foreign sims? Like, if I convince them to make babies or whatever, would that help me increase the foreign population - and particularly the younger foreign population - or would that not work since time essentially stands still in foreign countries?

Does it? All it takes is half an Sim to take care of the three basic needs, which is what you do at every Sim morning and evening. Shower, take a loo then Sim. Fun and social can be easily taken care of, and most recreational activities do fill those needs. Sleeping, reasonably, does take a long time, but the more expensive sleeping arrangement (bed) you set them up with, the time it takes will be much more reduce.

When you learn to invest time, and satisfy Sims with efficient/practical objects in terms of motive refillment, you'll be able to manage their time better.

Well yeah, higher end objects increase needs faster, but the problem there is that I was playing without cheats which meant I could only afford the crappy stuff Hygiene, bladder, hunger and even social weren't too much of an issue, I mostly found sleeping annoying since it took up so much of my free time (...much like how I hate sleep in real life for the same reason, haha) and also fun because it would decrease so rapidly at work and then I'd have to spend quite a lot of time getting them back to not only being happy enough to want to do other things, but also happy enough that the next work day wouldn't absolutely ruin them. Basically there were just so few after-work hours I could use before having to go to bed that it felt almost pointless, how are you supposed to accomplish anything in that time? Though, of course this is coming from someone who has played Sims for about 13 years and spent pretty much that entire time playing with cheats for money and needs, so I am VERY used to being able to utilize 100% of my sims' time in any way I want. Going from being able to do fun stuff nonstop to only having a few sim-hours per day is quite an adjustment to say the least Made me feel like I needed to maximize the life span to be able to do anything before they just die of old age, haha. At least playable careers that come with Ambitions make it a lot better since I don't have to just sit around and wait while they're at work, it's a lot of wasted playtime to have to just wait for them to finish working and sleeping - I found myself spending a whole lot of time scrolling through Twitter on my phone while my sims were doing their thing, which is not really what I have in mind when I decide to play a game, you know? I kinda want to actually play the game and not just wait.

Have you tried nraas relativity? It changes how quickly your sims complete actions relative to the sim clock so you can do more in a sim day. That might be something worthwhile trying out if you feel like you need more time for your sims to do fun stuff between taking care of themselves and going to work

This, i've set it to about 50% so the day is twice as long. Can't imagine going back. Sims get to have quality time together before and after school/jobs. In exchange, their lifespans are not as long as before but they get to do so much more now. Do try it out.

You can always have Sims slack off or "take it easy" at work. Depends on what you mean by "other things", since there are thing that tank the fun need and other stuff that help your Sim relief stress, which is what they suppose to be doing after work. if you're all much into playing the Sim to do things and aren't in rush to climb the career ladder, than there's not really much in having your Sim builds skills for that career (the performance bar still continue to increase, albeit at slower rate, but of course as long you still make sure they go there daily). Heck, job isn't a necessity if you don't mind and have the interest for your Sims to make a living as freelancers (sell paintings/novels or bustle in the street with instrument for tips, etc.). If you're not against using mods, may I suggest the ultimate careers mod by Zerbu? That one allows Sims to work in your assign community lot as their workplace, without having to disappear into a rabbit hole and instead do appriopate things that relate to their career, which contributes to the job performance meter (Culinary career in it, for example, requires to cook meals to be able to progress in that career and stay afloat). Honestly, iit should only take only 2-3 minutes for your Sims to wake up, if you always leave your game to stay at speed 4 (which is automatically gets set once all members gone to sleep) or speed 3.

For the sleeping taking up to much of the time, well the only I remedy I can suggest is spectate the world your Sim lives in and perhaps take a peak what other things Sims are doing and stuff that is happening around the town. As to what I do, I set my Sims a fix schedule as to when they should get to sleep (which is at around 7-9 pm), which gives them enough time to wake up early, refill their needs and thus leave for work in a better mood.

As for thinking of unconventional ways to play the game, I suggest opening a new game/save for testing and experiment with how the game mechanic function and work. That helps me thinking of ways of new things to try out.

Have you considering playing from rock bottom? Like doing a mass annihilation to the population in one of the maxis worlds, than trying to repopulate the world with realistic progression and gradual unlocking system? Try starting a world that starts off with just one household, with no rabbit holes in sight and how they have to build the world on their own (start farming and fishing to unlock and open up grocery rabbit hole, which would give a temptation for tourist (CAS Sims to reside in the town). Restrict other things and make it an objective to start unlocking them (all bookshelfes should be emptied and the bookstore should be eradicate till the town receives a writer and finishes creating the very first novel, which (s)he then can start investing purchasing a commercial property to plot down the bookstore).