How do you play The Sims 4?

I always start with a single young adult, lifespan on long (and use a cake to age them up sooner if I want to). Fulfill their aspiration and build up some "family" money. I usually also have a story for them in my head- they like to party, so spend a lot of free time at clubs and bars or they are obsessed with their career or they want to flirt and be romantic with everyone they meet etc. When I've gotten them to a point where I have done whatever I want with them, sometimes they get married, sometimes not, but they always have a kid (or a few).
Then I pick the child I want to be my next main Sim and start a new story for them. When they are teens, sometimes I move them out on their own, sometimes my previous Sim dies. *shrug*
I always set out intending to play one family line for a long time, but I always end up getting bored with them and starting over by the fourth or fifth generation. Then I usually build for awhile before starting a new family line.

"lisamwitt;c-17165499" wrote:
I always start with a single young adult, lifespan on long (and use a cake to age them up sooner if I want to). Fulfill their aspiration and build up some "family" money. I usually also have a story for them in my head- they like to party, so spend a lot of free time at clubs and bars or they are obsessed with their career or they want to flirt and be romantic with everyone they meet etc. When I've gotten them to a point where I have done whatever I want with them, sometimes they get married, sometimes not, but they always have a kid (or a few).
Then I pick the child I want to be my next main Sim and start a new story for them. When they are teens, sometimes I move them out on their own, sometimes my previous Sim dies. *shrug*
I always set out intending to play one family line for a long time, but I always end up getting bored with them and starting over by the fourth or fifth generation. Then I usually build for awhile before starting a new family line.

I've also tried playing families for a long time. I think the toddlers are just too much chaos for me, haha.

read my legacy. After I'm done with the legacy I going to try a history challenge but I'm trying to figure out some guidelines about royalty because the challenge itself doesn't have any guidelines

I haven't been playing Sims for long, but so far I found the scheme I really enjoy:
- Multiple households in rotation.
- Each household focused around 1-2 themes (like cooking and restaurants, space and science, business and politics etc) and they do/learn/explore everything there is about it.
- A lot of headcanons, I want them to have personalities beyond traits, feelings beyond moodlets, motives beyond whims, I want stories beyond breeding.
- "Color-coding" my households and Sims - may seem weird, but each household and every Sim within it has a color theme, or a palette if you wish, which I use in all of their outfits and to some extent in interiors too - I put a lot of time and effort to it and really enjoy it ("color-coded" most of the premades too)
- Don't have kids unless I know exactly who I want them to be in future. All roles are planned.
- Have all my Sims befriend each other and stay in touch.

I play the premade families on a rotation with a few of my own made families in the mix as well. I rotate to a different family after one whole sim year has passed by so I play from the start of spring till the end of winter and I have my season length set at 14 days per season. I also keep aging off for everybody except the active household and I don't use cheats so all my families will have to work for everything they get.

I play a legacy so something new for all generations!
Every new gen is like a new single sim starting out with all the possibilities.
I guess the goal is to try and play every aspect of the game.

In TS4 I've been playing one family line for several generations. The hardest part is picking which child in every generation I want to move forward with but eventually I've been able to pick one (...sometimes two...) who will either move to another house and the old family must fend for themselves or the chosen one will continue living in the family home and possible other siblings will move away. The sims I play all end up having their own personalities (in my head anyway...), goals and different lives so I don't find it at all boring. Because I have MCCC the sims I don't play go on with their lives on their own. ...and there may have been some light inbreeding if they happen to meet a relative of theirs that I really like (looks & traits)... But hey, it's just a game ?

I'm a massive storyteller in real life so the sims is yet another platform for me to express my imagination! :)

Whens starting a game I love to create couples based off movie characters. They never turn out to be anything like their movie prototypes but that's not the point, the point is to get yourself some good-looking sims without breaking too much sweat! :D Then I give them an interesting (though mostly basic and cliche) plot and see where it goes from there. Sometimes I have a huge story arc completely thought through, I know exactly where my sims will end up in two weeks and what are their plans for next year. But mostly all of the main twists come to my mind during gameplay or taking screenshots.

I'm a realistic player, which means that my sims have to brush their teeth, pay insurance, get haircuts and do a lot of other unnecessary things. I don't even allow them to travel to different worlds without using the plane or the train! And tickets cost a fortune. Also, before starting a game I think about how much money, what skills and what jobs will my sims start off with and cheat all of that in to make them more real and lively from the start. I find it very unrealistic that all sims start off with only 20 000 simoleons and no skills whatsoever.

My sims have a custom lifespan of 840 days. One year equals 84 sim days (I play with 21 day seasons) and equals 7 years of growth (basically if a sim is born in spring he'll be 7 years old next spring, and 14 the spring after that), so in total they live 70 sim years. That's pretty long, but I never get bored with my sims. I sign them up for classes, send off on a cruise to Disneyland, add more drama to their lives or simply switch to another family. And there's nothing wrong with having boring routined days once in a while.

Overall the plot, the story, and character growth are the main things I'm invested in when playing the sims. I play stories, not challenges. And it's fun. :)

I come up with a basic story in my head as I’m creating my sim. Who are they and how do they relate to the sims already in the world?

Recently I created a sim who was a world traveller and archeologist, kind of a more realistic Indiana Jones. The idea was that he returned to Windenburg to win back Clara Bjergsen, after she abruptly ended their relationship (they had been childhood sweethearts) to marry Bjorn fifteen years ago.

That was my basic hook.

From there, I fleshed out the story in my head as I began to play.

Coming up 400 hours, I'm at the point where it is pretty much the same rinse and repeat action.

I remember the first hours, creating a few random families, starting off the "Sanders family with Aiko", i had a basic understanding of the rules and traits after the tutorial which i abandoned because it wasn't instructive enough.

Anyway, i created a few more and settled on "Sandra Matthews" before i adjusted the character later on, started building my first house, "very basic house" on a 6x6 grid for one person. it is very doable. at the time she was an adult with not much time left on her clock and biological clock either. she is a loner writer and all she wanted to get a guy in for the night and then she can raise her child in peace, but she ended up with twins! it wasn't especially difficult on first glance, but i bailed before long as Sandra ended up becoming an elder. So i adjusted the character ater that.

Went through a few more households before settling on Tobias Lancaster and Ryan Jacklin in "Strange buddies", created two houses around these two, the twin small houses and later a pad for them. Tobias became a favorite of mine more or less right away and the chemistry he has with Summer Holiday makes her an ideal target every time for him on new playthroughs.

Pretty soon i had all these families and buildings, i may as well begin micromanaging Willow and Oasis, but it is more like a job than anything, it is very time consuming going through over 2 dozen families. after the 300 hour mark, i decided to try out MCCC and it really opened up the game, setting rules as they should be like they can be in the real world, everything except familial relations. it cut the micromanagement down completely and allowed me to focus on the families i want to.

i watched one family, the Bauers go from young adults to elders and death, i watched as liberty Lee who was long time married to Leroy Bauer leave the household as an elder unable to take the loss, i watched as her son refuse to take the Lewis surname and keep his Bauer name. i saw both twins die, Helen's husband Michael Bradstone whom i created as well due to a lack of suitable males at the time. it was tragic and engaging at the same time seeing all of it going off, and then the reaper turned the TV on and started watching it for a bit as the family were crying when Michael kicked the bucket right next to the reaper.

Never know what you will find until you take a look. then i changed the familial settings for romance, and got into a gross relationship in a Tormen household with a dozen babies needing feeding before long, i added a second sister and ended up with 18 babies. now that was a challenge, rotating around one young adult and three teens. it wasn't the worst part, that was still to come, looking after 18 toddlers.. it was absurd and more trouble than you'll ever see. after setting offspring limits to 6 and household size to 25.

Anyway, i'm just looking to find challenges at this point