How Does Rotational Play Affect Progress?
I know the basic idea of rotating households; you spend time with one family, then switch to a different family and play them for a while. However, I've never done it before, and want to try. If I...
Forum Discussion
I've been playing rotationally for a while. A week per family works well for me.
If you want to have the experience of playing each family throughout their lives, keep aging set to Active Household Only.
If you want NPCs to age at the same rate as your played families, pick one of your played families as the "timekeepers" and whenever you play the timekeeper family, set NPC aging to on, then off for the rest of the time.
It is true that relationships decay. I try to make sure that important friendships get some quality time during each rotation, and I wouldn't want to play more than a dozen families in the same save because that'd be too long in between and the relationships would decay too far.
It is easier to maintain relationships between played households because they can spend time together on each other's turns.
A drawback is that relationships between NPCs decay faster than you would think. Like after a rotation or two, one of my sims got to know one of the Renegades club from Get Together, and then discovered that all the Renegades had forgotten one another, even though they were still teens.
For university I always play a whole semester at once without rotating away, because I want them to be the kind of student that I have in mind for the character/story, not the kind that the game randomly chooses when they're unplayed.
At the end of the semester, if they're in student housing, I rotate away after all their work is turned in but before the report card is announced. That ensures they keep their housing.
If they're not in student housing I usually wait until after the report card because I want to see it :) and then I just say No to the "re-enroll?" prompt. They technically are not university students until I rotate back to them again for their next turn but there's no real drawback to that.
If you want to have the experience of playing each family throughout their lives, keep aging set to Active Household Only.
If you want NPCs to age at the same rate as your played families, pick one of your played families as the "timekeepers" and whenever you play the timekeeper family, set NPC aging to on, then off for the rest of the time.
It is true that relationships decay. I try to make sure that important friendships get some quality time during each rotation, and I wouldn't want to play more than a dozen families in the same save because that'd be too long in between and the relationships would decay too far.
It is easier to maintain relationships between played households because they can spend time together on each other's turns.
A drawback is that relationships between NPCs decay faster than you would think. Like after a rotation or two, one of my sims got to know one of the Renegades club from Get Together, and then discovered that all the Renegades had forgotten one another, even though they were still teens.
For university I always play a whole semester at once without rotating away, because I want them to be the kind of student that I have in mind for the character/story, not the kind that the game randomly chooses when they're unplayed.
At the end of the semester, if they're in student housing, I rotate away after all their work is turned in but before the report card is announced. That ensures they keep their housing.
If they're not in student housing I usually wait until after the report card because I want to see it :) and then I just say No to the "re-enroll?" prompt. They technically are not university students until I rotate back to them again for their next turn but there's no real drawback to that.
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