How Much Planning Goes Into Your Gameplay?

     

It seems as if I'm always planning depending on what happens. My plans change constantly as the story unfolds like in my vampire dynasty I did not intend to have as many children as they did, 4 between 2 families. But, now there's a plan to expand on the relationships between the kids as they all live in the same neighborhood.

Another of my plans are to have my spellcaster Brooke woo and marry my vampire Alexander, changing him to normal then to spellcaster. I have one child spellcaster already and this going to be another one in the making. :D

I must have a plan for my simmies or I will never open my game.

"simgirl1010;d-972090" wrote:
Does anyone just play the game without any particular stories in mind? I don't make up any backstories, I don't have any complicated preconceived scenarios in mind when I open my game. I have things I want to accomplish when I load the game. Finish up a semester at Uni, reach the next level in a career, collect ingredients for a potion, plan a family barbecue, redecorate a room, etc. I don't have to imagine anything because I play within the game's parameters. The family I play is just a regular family, doing regular family things, or a regular as things that occur in the Sims universe. :p I was just curious how much imagination and planning and storytelling feature in your play style.

I play like this as well.

Usually I have a idea for a story for all my main sims in my mind sometimes they work out how I imagined sometimes they don’t. I sort of learn more about my sims when things don’t turn out as I imagined plus it keeps my gameplay interesting. It’s even down to things like what world they end up living in and what style of house.

I have three general scenarios I stick to-multi-family rotational, single family, single sim. Which one I'm going to play, and what my sims' names will be is generally the extent of my new save planning. As children are born in the game, I usually plan what their futures will be, but loosely. I usually play on long life, so I've usually changed my mind about a sim's future plans one or a dozen times by the time they've grown up.

I usually have a very basic back story to start off from, and then the game does the rest.

"simgirl1010;d-972090" wrote:
Does anyone just play the game without any particular stories in mind? I don't make up any backstories, I don't have any complicated preconceived scenarios in mind when I open my game. I have things I want to accomplish when I load the game. Finish up a semester at Uni, reach the next level in a career, collect ingredients for a potion, plan a family barbecue, redecorate a room, etc. I don't have to imagine anything because I play within the game's parameters. The family I play is just a regular family, doing regular family things, or a regular as things that occur in the Sims universe. :p I was just curious how much imagination and planning and storytelling feature in your play style.

I plan very little.
I make a backstory, decide on life goal (aka what career she will maximize and what type of lot she will be living at). This is also why I don't use much decorations or landscaping.

The rest is basically daily grind. Like real life, I guess....
Wake up, go to work, come home, do homework, sleep, go to work... over and over.

I seldom go beyond a basic concept/plan, at least in TS2. The game has a way of taking things in directions I never thought of. A recent TS4 example is that was planning on having my sim connect with Summer Holiday. Game had other ideas (that decided to go along with) so now my sim is married to Liberty Lee and they are expecting their 1st baby. Flexibility is very important, even crucial.

I play the way I write; by the seat of my pants. I start with a vague goal, like "impregnate as many Sims as possible to see what happens to the game, while simultaneously attempting the Master Vampire aspiration." I make a Sim, sometimes from scratch and sometimes from my personal library, give them a makeover until they are absolutely perfect, set them down, then wing it.

Sometimes I hit my goal too fast. Sometimes I get bored on the way to my goal. Those are reasons I have a bunch of different saves.

If I want to make up my own world and write a story, I'll write. I like writing. I want my Sims to surprise me. Sims 4 is pretty weak in that regard, but improving a little.

By the way, I'm up to like 4 or five pregnancies, but I don't think any baby-pires have been born yet. I probably ought to check in with Phoenix Valentine.