Is Sims 2 Fun Without Story Progression?

I think it has just enough to my liking. For instance when I see my other Sims out on community lots they are building relationships, flirting, or fighting, or whatever. They don't lose those known Sims like how TS4 culls relationships. That's enough for me. Because I don't want a game that marries off, or kills off (but yes, Sims can die in TS2, too) or culls out my other Sims when I am rotating.

There are many, many ways in TS2 to age Sims and or set relationships or whatever, if you want the game to 'progress'. You don't even need mods. The TS2 devs built right into the game cheats all that we might need to do this stuff for ourselves if we want others to age up, and or change ages, and or to be in a relationship with someone else, or be pregnant by someone else, etc.

But if you don't like that much control (I do) then there are plenty of mods that can do it for you.

I've always enjoyed TS2 with no story progression. I like to play a rotation of different families, a week or two with one, then another, then another. Getting the kids to become friends (or enemies), advancing (or stalling) the parents' careers...I love it. But, I acknowledge that it takes a certain kind of personality to enjoy that sort of gameplay, though.

In terms of aging NPC friends with your sims, they did add a feature to age up some friends automatically when your sim ages up. You can also age your NPC friends up by inviting them over and having a birthday party for them. And, of course, there are also cheats and mods that help too. I think The Bat Box mod has an age management feature. It certainly has features that allow you to add skills and (if you have "University") add a college degree to a newly created adult sim's background and clean up old gossip data from your save to prevent save corruption.

I just do the age progression by myself, I prefer the way it works in TS2. In sims 4 everyone seems to age faster than my sim and if I leave one household to play another then come back, my sims haven't been to work and all of their needs are low.

Sometimes I want it, sometimes I don't. I would love to be able to put some families spares into the time stream but not when I play neighborhood rotation. :)

"Cinebar;c-17432271" wrote:
I think it has just enough to my liking. For instance when I see my other Sims out on community lots they are building relationships, flirting, or fighting, or whatever. They don't lose those known Sims like how TS4 culls relationships. That's enough for me. Because I don't want a game that marries off, or kills off (but yes, Sims can die in TS2, too) or culls out my other Sims when I am rotating.

There are many, many ways in TS2 to age Sims and or set relationships or whatever, if you want the game to 'progress'. You don't even need mods. The TS2 devs built right into the game cheats all that we might need to do this stuff for ourselves if we want others to age up, and or change ages, and or to be in a relationship with someone else, or be pregnant by someone else, etc.

But if you don't like that much control (I do) then there are plenty of mods that can do it for you.

Thank you for the reply! I'll give it a shot! :P

I don't think so, it is for me for a short time, but I'd rather have story progression of other sims, like in 3, where other sims marry, have babies so I don't have to play anyone but my family. I use MCCC just for that, and to make my sims pick a certain gender I want them,to like or be interested in.

"Bluefairy286;c-17433904" wrote:
I just do the age progression by myself, I prefer the way it works in TS2. In sims 4 everyone seems to age faster than my sim and if I leave one household to play another then come back, my sims haven't been to work and all of their needs are low.

Same for me , I am taking modeling pictures of my sims 4 , I am dismayed by what I am seeing nobody went to work by themselves, some of my sims were pregnants with infants born. Story progression is not good really even in sims 3 I disabled it because it was not well made.

I'm quite fine without it. This way I have control over my sims and how time passes (or not) for them. Rotational play takes care of the age details and if I want extra tuning there are the mentioned game features & cheats and there is Simpe if I really want to dig in there.

"SimsLovinLycan;c-17432315" wrote:
I've always enjoyed TS2 with no story progression. I like to play a rotation of different families, a week or two with one, then another, then another. Getting the kids to become friends (or enemies), advancing (or stalling) the parents' careers...I love it. But, I acknowledge that it takes a certain kind of personality to enjoy that sort of gameplay, though.

This is where I stand too. I have two major styles of playing; I either want to do the story progression fully myself in a rotational style so I can fully control the story I'm trying to play out, and the sims 2 caters perfectly to this, or aging off for all sims, which I use for both self-imposed challenges and for a relaxed "my dream life" simulator.

I sometimes deviate from these styles, and control singular families, which I always turn unplayed aging off for. This is because I don't like EA's default story progression at all and it's actually one of the worst things added to The Sims franchise in my opinion. Nothing seems to ever happen with it on. Sims will VERY occasionally get married and have kids, but most seem to spend their life doing nothing and eventually die off, and your save becomes a literal ghost town that you have to fill back up with new sims after 2 or 3 generations. I'd rather deal with socialising with the same sims over and over, adding and removing Sims at my own discretion, than slowly watch the town die off.