Story Progession

Do you prefer to play the game with the story progression on or off? I had been playing the game with the story progession on for most of the game this time around but I turned it off before Christmas. I wanted to play some of my other Sims in my current family line without others Sims in the family line getting old or passing away before I got back to them so I thought if I turned off the story progression then that wouldn't happen. But, it doesn't work that way because they still do. I guess the townie Sims just can't move into the neighborhood by themselves and stuff with the story progression off. The problem is that I switch active households to one of the other members of the family line and figure I'll get back around to the others but then get playing the active household for a long time and then next thing I know my Sims are getting a call on their phone saying the Elder Sims are getting old and maybe I should visit them before they pass away and then a few or several Sim days later another call saying that they passed away. It says keeping the story progression on is suppose to keep the neighborhood balanced. I know there are a lot that use mods to manage the story progression the way they want it to be but I don't use mods in my game though.
If you have mostly played the game with the story progression on do you think that it really does balance out the neighborhood to a certain extent or not? When I did still have the story progession on I was alright with it on except when I wanted to move Sims out into the neighborhood and switch active households. I'm not sure if I like having the game taking care of them with story progression for a long length of time while I'm playing another household because last time when I switched back to one that had been taken care of by story progression for a long time a couple things didn't seem quite right. I guess if I want to balance it out better to get back to other households then I'll have to play each household a less amount of time even if I wanted to keep playing the active household I am on right now. But, oh well... such is the way of Sim life I guess.

18 Replies

Simmer2500
New Spectator
5 years ago
"Karritz;c-17763652" wrote:
"Simmer2500;c-17763628" wrote:
"Karritz;c-17763580" wrote:
I have NRAAS Story Progression on. I have ageing set to epic so the whole town ages slowly. My own sims I age up with cake when I'm ready.

If I want to play multiple households I have a few different strategies.

1. I rotate play through different households and try to make sure I do it before various sims are about to age up automatically. I keep a spreadsheet to warn me when a sim is close to aging up.
2. I play a single household, but rotate sims through it. This works well for large families.\
3. I use NRAAS Traveller mod. The households I want to play but not change while I'm playing other households get moved to different worlds. They can still interact with each other by visiting and their friendship and family trees stay intact. I have the mod set to ensure only the sims in the currently played world are affected by story progression or aging.

When I play with sims in a variety of worlds, it is important to stop them from aging while you are playing in other worlds or you run the risk of arriving in other worlds in the game to find everyone has died of old age and the world is now empty.

I think your first one is probably what I might try to do except I'm not going to keep track of it on paper. I have only played in Sunset Valley neighborhood so far but I have thought some about how if I did play in another neighborhood too how much those Sims would progress while playing in another neighborhood for a long time and like you said one could come back to an empty neighborhood. If you don't want that to happen then does turning aging off only affect the Sims in that one neighborhood?

The traveller mod seems to be set by default to stop the sims in other worlds from progressing. More info could be found on the NRAAS site.

I've found various settings in Options seem to work in only the world in which you set them and other options seem to work in all worlds. I always have to check what's going on. But, I do know for sure that if I change the length of life stages and my sims go to a different world I get asked if I want to get the manager to change the life stage settings in the world in which I've just arrived and I usually say yes unless there is a problem that I'm aware of and that's only happened once.

With turning aging on and off, I've had problems with that as sometimes sims have got stuck as never aging even when I want them to age and I've eventually got them to age but it's been a long and difficult procedure. Basically, what I found I had to do was go to City Hall and turn off aging for the entire town and then turn on aging for the entire town and then my problem sims were fixed and aging again. I always used to play with aging off so this sort of problem didn't bother me, but once I decided to turn it on it took me a while to get it all working again.

The reason I decided to turn aging on again for the whole town was my sims were aging because I aged them up with cake but the rest of the town just stayed the same for ever. And I didn't want to have to go around town all of the time just to individually age up all of the townies.

Oh, I see. I don't use mods in my game but from what you said about problems after turning aging on and off I'm not sure I really want to mess with that setting just to not have them progress too much while playing in another neighborhood. I have always kept the aging setting on and prefer to let my Sims age transition automatically on their own... I just would usually like to be playing them as the active household when they do so I don't miss it. I don't use the Birthday cake much except for with the baby Sims. But, I have had a similar glitch in my game previously where my Sims age bars did not work right which kept me from playing the game for long time and so I don't think I want to mess with the aging setting and possibly get that problem in my game again. I already thought I might have this problem back in my game again when I changed my active household to a Sim that had been taken care of by story progression for a long time and when I came back to him his job seemed to be glitched and every time I told him to go to work it kept cancelling out and he wouldn't go. Finally I got him to go to work but then when he got there he wouldn't go in the building and so I finally just told him to quit the job. Then his age bar seemed to be stuck and so I was concerned this glitch was back. I went back to the previous house that had been the active household before I switched households and was concerned that their age bars weren't working right either and so I went back to an earlier save of that game before I had switched to that other Sim and also decided to moved the other Sim who was their relative into this house too and everything seemed to be fine again.
karritz
Legend
5 years ago
When I have a sim that won't age their age bar says 'never' when it's supposed to say how long before they are due to age up.
timurjr96
5 years ago
Always on, I dont like to micromanage every aspect of the town. it also helps that my sims can have available partners from townies's offspring when they age up
Simmer2500
New Spectator
5 years ago
"Karritz;c-17763727" wrote:
When I have a sim that won't age their age bar says 'never' when it's supposed to say how long before they are due to age up.

Oh, I see. The age bar glitch I had started after a Sim couple came back from a vacation when I had the World Adventures expansion installed in the game and the age bars just got stuck and wouldn't move at all like it was suppose to. It's suppose to go down at a certain time at the end of each Sim day like mid-night I think until it gets down to their Birthday and it wasn't doing that. What ever the case though neither of those glitches are good to have in the game.
Simmer2500
New Spectator
5 years ago
"izecson;c-17763737" wrote:
Always on, I dont like to micromanage every aspect of the town. it also helps that my sims can have available partners from townies's offspring when they age up

Oh, I see. It would be a lot of them to switch between if a bunch moved into the neighborhood. I currently have it off but I'm not sure I necessarily want to play all the Townie Sims either that decided to move into the neighborhood when I still had the story progression on.
Sharooonia
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
"izecson;c-17763737" wrote:
Always on, I dont like to micromanage every aspect of the town. it also helps that my sims can have available partners from townies's offspring when they age up

For me I don't think turning it off is even a consideration. I like that it's part of the Sims 3 and with being open world I couldn't imagine it not evolving around my family.
301624037
5 years ago
In my ongoing Sunset Vally save (which is my main story) I play with story progression off. I play with aging off as well or at least epic lifespan, I do like to micromanage everything is this save.

In other saves that are usually for short-term, I sometimes play with nraas story progression.
timurjr96
5 years ago
"Sharonia;c-17764072" wrote:
"izecson;c-17763737" wrote:
Always on, I dont like to micromanage every aspect of the town. it also helps that my sims can have available partners from townies's offspring when they age up

For me I don't think turning it off is even a consideration. I like that it's part of the Sims 3 and with being open world I couldn't imagine it not evolving around my family.

Yeah i really love story progression and they dont seem too random in my opinion, sometime i get notification that Sims A and Sims B is being seen walking together, when i click on their sims avatar and there they are, really walking together but at graveyards lol.

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Story Progession

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