Calling Non-Rotational Players!

I've been playing one family, one save for the last five years. What keeps it fresh and interesting for me is focusing on different family members at different times. Sometimes I move some family members in with relatives in order to focus on specific family members. Or I'll move a family member into a separate home in order to concentrate on them and then move them back into the main family home. For example when Cottage Living released I moved one sim to Henford On Bagley to experience country life and farming. My goal is to use this family to complete all the aspirations, careers, skills, etc.

Their story is here.

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/1005742/my-super-sim-family-challenge#

It's not really a story. Mostly documentation of accomplishments to help me keep track of who has done what.

I have four separate saves right now, but only play one household in each save. I like them to be in the same place where I left them.

However, I do have a long-term project in that I am slowly diverging each save so that they are completely different from each other. For example, my legacy family lives in worlds full of big houses for happy, growing families. In the mischief and mayhem save, my Sims are creating chaos and hurt relationships among the townies.

And then I also sort of try to balance the four saves so that they are always at different stages. When one save has three children, another family is childless. One save has aging off, the others are on. Cats in one save, a single dog in another, no pets in the other two.

So I always have a Sim game ready to go that appeals to me in that moment, whether I have fifteen minutes before work and just want to fiddle around with a pair of Sims, or if I want a marathon hard session where I'm trying to get three children to be world-famous at the same time without any cheats.

I'm a vanilla rotatinal player and I was wondering how the relationship decay is bothering you. I barely notice it in my gameplay. One exception I remember is when the game removed a good friend of my sim, but normally it doesn't do that. My rule of thumb is to get above the acquaintance level if it's a relationship I wish to keep. The game removes acquaintances pretty freely, so always have to make sure they're friends before rotating away.

@Larrikateven that is exactly the way I used to play rotationally, everyone different in one save. Your idea appeals to me a lot, being able to jump into a particular save depending on what you want to play. I think that's how I will start things off and see how it goes.

There's lots of ideas I've picked up from people's replies, so thank you all for contributing.

@musteni maybe it's because I rotate away for probably a whole sim year? I have a lot of households in my game and by the time I get back to one they have lost their friends. The only relationships they still have are their own household members and even those are at different levels. It frustrates me no end that EA decided not to freeze relationships when you are not playing someone, it's a ridiculous choice.

I rotate saves rather than households in the same save. I have 12 saves I go through, one save per gameplay session - that way I never get bored playing the same family over and over. In three or four of the saves I'm playing different challenges, which also keeps it fresh and also sometimes pushes me out of my Simming comfort zone - which is a good thing!

I tend to switch families in a serial manner, not rotationally. I stick with one family for a while, sometimes long, sometimes short, until I have finished their story. Mostly I have a specific goal in mind which I want to reach. This can be full filling an aspiration, raising children, opening a store for other sims to visit or completing a scenario. After this goal is completed, I start a new family in the same save but leave the previous family around to socialize with. I like seeing them in the world. I have aging off for everyone outside the active household and disabled neighbourhood stories so my sims aren't going anywhere. I rarely go back to a family once I am done with them.

The only exception is my supersim who is completing all aspirations. She has a little break now but I will return once my growing together test family has raised their children.

In most of my "non-simlit" saves that I play a lot, I am only playing one household. But I have a lot of saves. I think currently I have about 16 saves that I play just for fun which are all one household only. I play whichever one I feel like playing in any given session. Even in the few other saves where I do play more than one household, I typically have a "main" household that gets most of the time and attention, and I only play the others for short and infrequent stints.

I think there are a couple reasons why I like sticking with one household. The main one is that I just get emotionally involved in what those specific sims are doing, and become very attached to them. I don't really want to play other households in that save, because then I wouldn't be playing with the main one. I don't like seeing my main sims walking around in public places doing things that don't fit their story when I am not able to control them.

I play with aging turned off because I'm not really interested in generational play. What appeals to me about sticking with one set of sims for a very long time is being able to create very complex stories for them in my head (regardless of whether I write the stories down or not). Spending so much time with them makes them really come alive for me as characters and people. There is plenty of time for subtle details, backstory, subplots, random adventure arcs, complex relationships, and character growth.

I take a TON of screenshots. Sometimes upwards of 100 screenshots during a single play session. I save them in separate folders for each save. I give them captions so I know what was going on story-wise in my head when I took them. Those screenshots help me think about the story as I am playing. And if I go away for a long time, I can use the screenshots to remind me what was happening in the story when I come back.

I will say that right now my playstyle is hindered by the bug that makes sims keep moving when the game is paused. That makes it hard for me to capture precise moments in the story with screenshots. So, lately, I have been not playing with a lot of my main household saves very much. I've been focusing on my more heavily staged simlit saves and my more superficial "messing around" play saves instead. Hopefully this will get fixed though.

Since my sim self's family has grown over time, i like to rotate his children's houses. Most of his kids are married with their own kids now and what ever household i'm playing become the main stars of the show for a while.

@GlacierSnow I'm tempted to turn ageing off for the reasons you gave. This would be a totally new way for me to play. I think I will do that in a few separate saves and see how I enjoy it.

All this input from you peeps, I'm actually looking forward to starting some non-rotational saves after work tonight, I was feeling quite sad about it yesterday so thank you all <3

Have fun @elanorbreton :)