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Field Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 4th Jan 2019 at 12:44 AM
Default Your playstyle: how has it shifted?
When I started out playing Sims 2 I was literally 9 and I got stuck in that ol' "only family and knowledge sims, only family play" cycle I tried to make a self sustaining hood for years, downloaded Chris Hatch's A&N and all the farm animals haha it never worked out though.

But many years have passed and my life has changed, now I'm working as a freelance designer and spending my Sunday night at a club where the yelp reviews say their couches will give you gonorrhea Now I've started over on a completely new computer and my game has become a cross between Shameless and a Ryan Murphy movie, and my cc has gone deep into the uncanny valley I used to use the idolatry skins and remi hairs, but now I use mouseyblue's skins and loveeee pooklet.


What about you guys? What's your cc and gameplay preference? Sims 2 has been around a while, how have your saves changed?
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 4th Jan 2019 at 1:10 AM
I started out playing with families, and a bit of generational play. Then I got into storytelling, and kinda got stuck there, particularly after I got into making CC. I've always loved taking pictures ingame, but I've moved more from a family album of things that happened in my game to more studio-ish setups and a lot of posing, sometimes for contests. Nowadays I mostly play short sessions of testing CC I've made, and I tend to get into photoshoots while testing those items. I still do the occasional contest, but the sites with the types of contests I like are mostly gone (SimOasis, Simscommunity, and a couple more). I still do stortelling, but haven't done in a while because of computer problems (my main simming computer is barely clinging on to life, and the slowly failing laptop is mostly used as a testing ground for CC making and quick photoshoots), but I do write a lot, so once I decide on a new computer I'll probably get back to that. I do feel bad for my CC folder, though. 1-2 years of mostly CC-making is going to b a little rough on the new game, I can imagine...

I do prefer my main game which used to have around 35 GB of CC (which I think I've cleaned out a lot of junk from, so it's down to 22-24, probably building it up again when I get a new and better machine). I like a bit of everything, and my game is tethering somewhere in the middle of the grey area between MM and realistic. I'm not too fond of a clean version of either style, so I use whatever I like. My laptop have my essential defaults and hacks, plus whichever items I'm testing out in that particular session, usually somewhere around 4 GB while testing stuff and up to 5-10 GB if I do larger photoshoots or short stories. It refuses to run my full game (or rather, the storytelling neighborhood I use).
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#3 Old 4th Jan 2019 at 1:16 AM
Quote: Originally posted by simmer22
I started out playing with families, and a bit of generational play. Then I got into storytelling, which I still do (but haven't done in a while because of computer problems - my main simming computer is barely clinging on to life, and the slowly failing laptop is mostly used as a testing ground for CC making and quick photoshoots). I've always loved taking pictures ingame, but I've moved more from a family album of things that happened in my game to more studio-ish setups and a lot of posing, sometimes for contests. Nowadays I mostly play short sessions of testing CC I've made, and I tend to get into photoshoots while testing those items. I still do the occasional contest, but the sites with the types of contests I like are mostly gone (SimOasis, Simscommunity, and a couple more).

I do prefer my main game with over 30 GB of CC (which I think I've reduced down to 22-24, posibly building it up again when I get a new and better machine). I like a bit of everyhting, and my game is tethering somewhere in the middle of the grey area between MM and realistic. I'm not too fond of a clean version of either style, so I use whatever I like.


30 gb??? Do the loading screens not kill you??

Impressive.
Mad Poster
#4 Old 4th Jan 2019 at 1:21 AM
I kinda got used to it. My previous laptop spent upwards of 3-4 hours (!) loading with a third of that CC amount, so for me, 5-20 minutes on the laptop is very quick, and around an hour for the desktop wasn't all that bad, just enough time to get some housework done (because the 2-3 days I'd spend doing photoshoots after loading up my game I'd not get much else done but eat and sleep).
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#5 Old 4th Jan 2019 at 2:08 AM
My husband bought me Sims 2 soon after it came out. I switched from Sims 1 over to 2 right away. I mostly played small unconnected families and explored each EP as it came out. I discovered challenges in about 06 and CC around the same time. I had not used or known about CC for Sims 1. At this point, I only knew of the Exchange and picked up a lot of horrible stuff and occupied houses and hacks in houses. From about 07 on I mostly played challenges. Did a lot of bad stuff to my game like moving sims between hoods and using the delete all character cheat. I started to play the BACC in 2010 learned about not corrupting my hoods and began sorting my CC and using simPE. The BACC is what morphed my game from challenges to integrated hood play, which is how I play now. I still play the occasional challenge (I am playing the poverty challenge now) or build. I learned to recolour last year and upload those now and then too.

As to CC I am semi Maxis match. I tend to avoid all photoshopping unless it's very well done, I like more cartoony looking sims. I have about 14 gigs in my modern sims 2 folder and about 12 in my medieval sims 2 folder. I keep them separate so I can use different defaults. Then I have my test folder and my building folder where I am currently playing this challenge.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#6 Old 4th Jan 2019 at 3:04 AM
When I started playing the existent PV was my main hood for a very, very long time. I still have that, and play it from time to time. However as I got tired of playing it I ventured out to create my own towns/neighborhoods using empty templates. I play both modern and medieval (right now on the latter..darn Farnham!) but I am enjoying it more because I've matured in my playstyle, not wanting to micromanage everyone from the start.
Needless to say, that means I had to get every single type of management hack there is in the known universe. That makes it far easier to play without swearing all day long. My CC folder is fairly stable now, and I can live with the load time of 15 minutes.
Thinking back, I only shudder in horror at all the awful builds I used to do, and thank myself for having become far smarter when it comes to downloading-and so do my computer/game/CC folders.

Receptacle Refugee & Resident Polar Bear
"Get out of my way, young'un, I'm a ninja!"
Grave Matters: The funeral podium is available here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/e6tj...albits.zip/file
My other downloads are here: https://app.mediafire.com/myfiles
Test Subject
#7 Old 5th Jan 2019 at 12:33 AM
I was kind of late to the Sims game. I found a copy of The Sims in a thrift store in early 2008. I brought it home and stayed up all night playing it. I loved it so much, my husband bought me The Sims 2 for my birthday a few months later. I've been playing ever since.

I started out just playing "legacies" of single family households and Sims that I created myself. I didn't really know what I was doing. I think I just built a house on an empty lot in Pleasantview and went to town. Then I discovered the pre-made families and fell in love with them. Pleasantview is still my favorite 'hood and I play it almost daily. I never got into challenges much, although I play them sometimes for my livestreams. I love playing entire neighborhoods, connecting my Sim families, and building their family trees through the generations. That's how I've always loved to play and the core of my gameplay hasn't really changed that much.

I played completely vanilla for years before I ever found out about custom content or mods. Now, I have about 2GB of cc and mods - not that much compared to others, but it feels like a lot to me! I only play Maxis-Match because I prefer it to the more realistic style. That hasn't changed either. But, I do find that I'm much more picky about what I download, I've learned how to organize my CC better, and I know how to not corrupt my game (unlike when I first started).
Forum Resident
#8 Old 5th Jan 2019 at 12:41 AM Last edited by terula8 : 5th Jan 2019 at 1:05 AM.
I've always played for myself: my rules, my way, what I want, but I'm toying with the idea of possibly sharing pictures at some point. Maybe. I've been taking a lot more photos in-game, and I actually really enjoy looking back at them and remembering all those hard-to-set up moments, or lovely little accidentally perfect shots. It might be nice to share those going forward, I'm just shy.

I used to always make sims and families - and would get bogged down in the minutiae of picking the right aspirations, and trying to work out how to make 'interesting' families. I was always worrying and fretting over which combinations and so on, and I used to hate the townies.

These days, townies are the core of my playstyle. I use the maxis ones extensively (with makeovers), but I also spawn new ones with new default face templates. I love their randomly generated skills, personalities, and names. Townies are my main population besides born in game sims. Other than the standard 6 that I always make because they were my first sims and I like to have at least one hood with all of them in it, I don't bother with creating sims in CAS at all. I let the game create them for me, randomly assign them jobs, names and genetics, and then clean them up with gussy up. It just makes them feel more real to me somehow when I don't make them myself.
Lab Assistant
#9 Old 5th Jan 2019 at 12:56 AM
In the mid to late 2000s, my Sims 2 gameplay consisted mostly of playing a single family until I got bored of them, creating "perfect" families, and abusing every cheat code I could find. I distinctly remember loving the supernaturals (at the time I only had access to vampires and werewolves) and killing Sims was a fun activity for me too.

I'm about 20, and I'm sure you'd all be incredibly shocked to learn that my playstyle has changed a lot in 10+ years! I do rotational play now (though I've tried and tried again to do integrated hoods, I am just not really super into the OFB play like I used to be). Additionally, my interest in supernatural Sims has dropped to zero. I'm still just as into genetics and family play as I was way back when, though. I've never been into playing premade households.

I didn't start modding my games until I was about 12 or 13 years old, so the last time I really played TS2 (2009, when I made the jump to Sims 3) I played totally vanilla. Now my downloads folder is about 4 GB and growing. My CC is more on the alpha side. The "uncanny valley" thing has never bothered me, and I didn't realize until recently that it's something that apparently makes others' skin crawl!
Alchemist
#10 Old 5th Jan 2019 at 1:32 AM
I started out innocently enjoying the Newbies in Sims 1, never straying out of the safe little suburban tutorial, but was badly traumatized when the burglar showed up. I finally recovered and played all the expansion packs, loved Makin Magic, but still played it all very safe. A boyfriend bought me Sims 2 and I discovered that simmers were modding it and it opened a whole new world of downloads and customizing EVERYTHING. I didn't actually realize that Sims had aspirations and could be played like a game for years! I did play it as a game for a bit, but now I build worlds and stories based on random things the townies and premades do. Like @terula8, townies and pre-mades feel more real to me, so I very rarely make any sims myself and my sims rarely age - Brandi Broke has never aged at all. I like surprises so I look for ways to surprise myself, like using SimPE to find and input a random Father NID for a pregnancy. I'm also heavy into making everything autonomous that I can, so I'll spend a very long time setting things up so the sims can run a lot themselves while I just watch and take pics and invent more storylines.
Mad Poster
#11 Old 5th Jan 2019 at 4:16 PM
I don't think my playstyle has changed much. Early on I found a playstyle that suited me, and I've stuck to it. I play slowly, carefully and protectively. I look after my Sims -- because I love them. But we have fun!
Quote: Originally posted by purplestuddedcoffin
spending my Sunday night at a club where the yelp reviews say their couches will give you gonorrhea
I don't go to clubs like that -- but my Sims do!! But they don't get VD, and they don't get pregnant either (well, not unless they want to -- and they are in a position to give a child a loving home); they just enjoy themselves.

My game spends far more time paused than it does running -- I keep pausing to make sure everyone's safe and (reasonably) happy. As many of you already know, I invariably play with aging off, only turning it on for the occasional birthday. For my Sims a day is just that -- a day, and I try to help them make the most of it. ("Where do you want to go to today?", as it used to say when Windows 95 started up.) But, even if nothing much happens today, well, there's always tomorrow. As Scarlett O'Hara once said, "Tomorrow is another day."

Procreation really isn't a big thing in my game -- I think there's an average of about one baby a year, across all my 'hoods. This is probably because the urge to reproduce myself is almost entirely lacking in me. Any baby wants I do have are more than fulfilled through my Sims: I think I cried when my first Sim babies -- they were twins -- were born. I suppose I was more directly involved in their birth than I have been in any real life one.

Playing with aging off does mean that I miss out on seeing the genetics system working through the generations, but I'd rather do that than watch the Sims I love grow old and die. (I see plenty of that in real life.) I occasionally mess around with genetics in CAS, when I'm "rolling the pacifier" before starting to play.

My playstyle wouldn't be for everyone, but it suits me. I think it's basically realistic with a hint of utopia. My Sims generally don't do perfection. But I think they live in a society that's a little bit better than real life. Because surely that must be possible?

Custom Content? I like what I like! Whether it's "realistic" or "Maxis Match" doesn't really matter, as long as I like it. I've always played with some CC -- I just have more of it now! My male Sims have Maxis skins, my females have a default replacement which is really just the Maxis skin with nipples added. Because frankly the absence of nipples spooks me.

Here are Andrew (Knowledge) and Gloria (Romance) as I first made them in CAS back in November 2012:
There's no CC to be seen in the picture, but Andrew already had CC swimwear and underwear.

And here for comparison is my newest Sim, Gerard Paton (Romance), pictured here in CAS on 1st January 2019. Gerard hasn't quite made into my game yet. He's currently in the Veronaville Family Bin.

So has my game really changed? Well, apart from a bigger format for in-game pictures, more CC (and the undoubted fact that I have become a little bit better at playing, I think the answer is: Not Really.
Screenshots

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
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