What's the main thing you look for when choosing a world to play in?

Sounds good.

I'm kind of lazy when it comes to starting a new world, I prefer most of the lots have something on them. With a few residents living around the world, with a bit of a back story.

I am in no way creative enough for CAW so I just download worlds from the exchange. It took me a good long while to find one that I liked that ticked almost all the boxes. But I am on the hunt again for a world that does tick ALL the boxes so here have my wish list in case you want to incorporate it.

Medium world
I prefer to have mostly empty lots so I can customise the buildings I use. But in saying that I don't mind at all having the main community lots, like City Hall and the rabbit hole work places, already in place since they can be a pain to find ones that suit the style of a world. Also some homes are cool.
I like more open spaces, easy to navigate around but not too linear or grid like so some little laneways and 'districts'
DIVING SPOTS I have a world I love and is perfect (Ridgeview in Summer but Rflong7) other than that fact it has no diving spots and they can't be placed in it. Also nicer looking shores for ports for house boats, so ones closer to roads etc.
I like the small town not rural but countryside look.
I always populate a town with my own sims but I am not opposed to having some families already in a town for the backstory.

For me I like larger worlds that are interesting/have something different to the existing worlds, for example worlds that are inspired by different countries, fantasy worlds, etc. It's also pretty important for me to have things to do in the world like nightclubs/bars, and a central park is a must! so then my sims can get out the house and do things and meet other sims

I get you, diving lots do seem a bit out of place in non tropical worlds. After a whole lot of time yesterday I was able to get one to work in my world, but I have made a small one, not a 64 x 64 lot like most in Isle Paradiso. Maybe for your worlds you could do the same, make several smaller dive sites. I actually have a friend who is a fisherman and goes diving and he did say that even non tropical oceans have amazing and unique underwater landscapes and they can be quite localized, so its not unusual to have a really lush and packed area randomly among not so interesting terrain.

Check out some of Rflong7's worlds if you want to do some more research too. They are hugely popular, as I said my favorite is Ridgeview in Summer, that will give you an idea of what I meant in my wishlist. You will see the shore lines are lovely open sloping beaches but not really suited to houseboat ports, other than that the layout is nice with open space but a few little districts and laneways, nice size too. I also love the aesthetic, lush and well kinda of generic so it suits most stories. Not saying you are building a world depending on what I want, just saying Rflong7 has an example of almost everything on my wishlist.

Also the more I think about it the more I do like the idea of having some pre-made families and houses, and like you said if someone doesn't like them they can just remove them. You could also upload 2 versions of your town when it is made, one with the finished lots and households and another with just blank lots or only some finished lots, having a town with only the necessary community lots finished and everything else empty is also a popular way to upload worlds.

Well, one of the first things I look for in a world I want to play in is the playability of the world. Is all the routing good in the world that I want to stick my sims into. Are my sims going to get stuck. If there’s serious routing issues then it starts to make the world unplayable because sims get stuck and play gets bogged down.

I tend to go for smaller worlds since that tends to work out better on a computer with a combined processing/graphics chip(APU) - now that I’m thinking of getting a gaming computer with a dedicated graphics card, I might look at playing the larger worlds like Great Bear.

Just because townies come pre-installed in a certain particular world doesn’t mean they have to stay in that world. But I always tend to look for townies who are interesting: River McIrish and Bebe Hart in Sunset Valley, Samantha Grey in University, Constance Shelley in Riverview. Your mileage may vary.

I also pick worlds based on what kind of game I’m playing. If it’s a legacy, I might start out in Sunset Valley where I know most of my favorite Sims. Secondly my OC sim can beat the ever lovin’ tar out of Jared Frio. None of my sims like him. If I’m playing a Supernatural Legacy, I might play Moonlight Falls. I haven’t bought Midnight Hollow yet (I don’t like vampires; I’m partial to werewolves). For my Castaway story (I don’t play challenges - I’ve never liked rules), I made myself a nice little island in CAW, no roads, but a mice beach and steep mountains. For Apocalypse stories, I chose “Les Sims 3: Sunset Died”. But for me now it has entirely too much vegetation for a town that has been blown off the map by a nuclear warhead.

I tend to look for worlds that I can populate with my own “family members” in a legacy so that tends to mean multiple 64x64 lots, Enough community lots to place down all the amenities. My sims basically are homebodies so bars aren’t important to my sims. This is part of the reason why I’m starting to make my own worlds, is because that way I can make them specific to how I want them; put in what I need. If I want a specific post apocalyptic world complete with burnt glass terrain from a nuclear weapon being detonated, I can make it myself and not have to ask others.

My next goal is to start making worlds specific to my stories that I can populate with my own sims with CAW. The royal pain right now is getting the roads to link up without causing an annoying routing issue. And frankly, that will take some time to sort out when I start making my own worlds with roads in CAW.

Ditto to what @LaBlue0314 and @Onverser said. :mrgreen: ?

I deleted my original post!

I was blabbering on about something un-related. o:)

"mw1525;c-18178052" wrote:
Tiny worlds which have empty lots, and no population are what I look for the most in a custom world.

I enjoy fleshing the worlds out by constructing each building, home and community lot. I populate by either creating or importing in my existing sims who fit my vision of the finished world. This may seem like a lot of work, but in the end, I have a world which feels like a small cozy community filled with simfolk I know. Thus, my game feels more like I am visiting the town and less like I am playing in it.

I do pretty much the same, expect I am a terrible builder so I spend days looking through the exchange getting homes and community buildings that fit my vision. Sometimes I will just use community lots from other worlds and just edit them a little to make them fit better in my world. But I too like putting all the lots and sims in myself as it really makes it feel like 'my world'.

I tend to pick worlds based on where I'd go on vacation if I had the money and time to do it. Hence Isla Paradiso. It did throw me for a loop when my Sunset Valley game gave me a challenge to learn the diving skill (diving? maybe I'm remembering the wrong word) and apparently you can't learn that in Sunset Valley. I took the class, but that had no effect on my learning or the challenge. IP hilariously bleeding over into SV.

I like worlds that look playable to me. That there isn't an overload of vegetation or far too many lots closely crammed together. I also look to see if there have been building cheats used.
It's very frustrating to begin play in a nice world, only to have it hang and freeze because a sim has become trapped somewhere due to a building cheat or routing problem. Bridgeport routing did that lot with spawning mixologists in NPC apartments and they can't get out, so I removed all NPC doors.

I choose worlds that I think look beautiful as well as look as if they would play well. I like interesting, scenic terrain ( but prefer flat lots for building ) pretty beaches and fishing spots, and areas that look unique.
I prefer empty worlds with just lots placed so I can build them to my liking. I nearly always end up editing or replacing lots in some worlds, so I figure that I might as well do it myself from the get go.

I try nearly every world I come across. Many don't stay in my game, but a lot do.