How make playing fun in a new world?

Every new world I have ever played or moved my sims into has been a chore. But it's meant to be a pleasant one. There are those who insist that everything has to be just right (or close enough) with a world before they will start playing it "for real," but that sounds way too much like work rather than fun to me. I usually jump right in with the household(s) I am playing and then slowly, a bit each sim night as they are sleeping or doing whatever it is they do at night, work on quadrants of the world's community lots, and take stock of the local population working again in batches make sure they have what they need and will progress/are progressing properly. At the beginning I would be most concerned that there is adequate schooling without routing issues, that sims aren't all clustering up in the same small number of careers, and that those with babies, toddlers, children, or who are pregnant have the cribs and other kiddie-related stuff they require so StoryProgression doesn't start pushing them to move houses for no other reason than they lack some furniture.

Beyond that though, it can take weeks or months of play before I ever get a world just the way I want it. On some of them I never do, they are always works in progress in some major way or another.

If at any point I am dreading loading up the game because I know that I have to "fix" a whole bunch of lots or other stuff this time and I really don't feel like it, then I have stop and re-examine my approach to whatever world it is. Again, the chore part is still meant to be fun and each phase something to look forward to.

I just went through this some weeks ago, and I'm doing something similar at the moment. I don't like redoing houses, so I usually just add beds and bring the kitchens and bathrooms to the point I need for whoever I move there (I'm talking of lots of moving households). It's okay though. I always have a different save to play if it gets boring. I leave some stuff for after the move.

For my current tie-in project, I actually have to populate an empty world, but as it's a really small one (just 14 residential lots total), the amount of effort needed is manageable. I know my limitations. As an aside, I noticed that I enjoy editing sims more than I anticipated, so that's what keeps me going.

As we like to say where I live: The way is the goal :smile: .

Thanks, @igazor and @Turjan :smile:

I'm thinking that maybe I should work on one lot at a time, first so that they have enough beds and stuff, and then decorate more when I want to take screenshots. Oh yeah, I should export and import my Retuner settings. Maybe take breaks from the chores to let the sims explore the surroundings. :smile:

@Cororon - I don't start new worlds all that often, but when I do I don't have any special fixed and set ways of going about it. I just do whatever I feel like at the moment.

I sometimes rebuild community lot buildings, or replace them with my own buildings from the bin at the bottom of the screen, and/or do the same with residential homes, rearrange gardens, community and/or residential, play a premade family for a while, and then go to Edit Town, create a new household, move them into a nice house and switch to them etc. etc.

As I see it the only reason to, and purpose with, playing computer games is that it's amusing and entertaining. If/when it ever starts feeling like work or a chore, I think you should stop immediately, and do something else in the game. Or play another game. Or leave the computer and do something entirely different. There is absolutely no point or gain in forcing yourself to keep playing if it's not fun.

Tox is So cute! :mrgreen:

I like to start with the map and then add roads and trees and little bits of things and work my way up to each new lot. Then, since I know all the little secrets, I never play in them long. :( But I have fun making the worlds. :heart:

@SuzyCue72 I agree. When the game feels like a chore or just becomes too much routine I take a break. What makes me play again is usually when I have ideas for a short story or pic. I make my own poses, so that's a fun way to make the impossible possible in the game. :smiley:

@Rflong7 Yes, Tox is cute. But he prefers to be called "handsome". :wink: He sometimes works for the television network, thanks to their diversity policy. The smaller beige spider is Little Pox. He is a nurse, studying to become doctor. :blush:

And yeah, you make awesome worlds and people talk about them a lot. :open_mouth: But hey, you can share your work but play in custom worlds made by others to discover their secrets. :wink:

When I was moving a lot of households around different worlds using porter mod i was saving their houses to the library. Then when i got to the new world I'd place the houses and move the sims back into their own houses with all their stuff. I'd include their name into the house name to make if easier to match households up with houses.

"Karritz;c-17423329" wrote:
When I was moving a lot of households around different worlds using porter mod i was saving their houses to the library. Then when i got to the new world I'd place the houses and move the sims back into their own houses with all their stuff.

While I do this with simpler houses, I noticed that the larger lots often bring the problems of the old world with them, which is a rather sobering effect, given it has the potential to sabotage the reason for the move.

"Turjan;c-17423417" wrote:

"Karritz;c-17423329" wrote:
When I was moving a lot of households around different worlds using porter mod i was saving their houses to the library. Then when i got to the new world I'd place the houses and move the sims back into their own houses with all their stuff.

While I do this with simpler houses, I noticed that the larger lots often bring the problems of the old world with them, which is a rather sobering effect, given it has the potential to sabotage the reason for the move.

My current solution is to use NRAAS Traveler mod and have multiple worlds as my issues were caused by overpopulation of the world. I currently have 13 home worlds with over 800 sims. Many of those sims are related to each other. I refer to this game as my Big Game and I have currently got 2 video series being made from sims living in the game. They are Oscar's Childhood (now Oscar's Teen Years) and The McFluff Story. The sims in each story are living in different worlds most of the time but the 'townies' are all my sims and are played whenever necessary.

@Karritz I actually keep up with your stuff and watched several of your videos, even if I don't directly comment on them very often, so I have a general idea about your main setup. I've also seen your last video, and one of the like is from me :smile: .

I should probably give an example of what I meant. I had a version of the Landgraab villa in SV where I had modified the house slightly with some general changes to the front gate with a greenhouse. I had removed the plants from the greenhouse prior to putting the lot into the library. I had moved to a new version of SV, which ran great (my old one had constant error 12's and save times of more than half an hour). The new SV now started out around 2 GB and loaded and saved quickly, even though I had portered all residents from old SV over. When I placed the modified Landgraab villa into the new town, the lot ran at nearly 3.1 GB out of the box. This means the lag was somehow baked into the lot, no idea how.

I can only guess that you shouldn't transfer lots that have been played for a long time. Relatively fresh ones seem to be okay.