Lack of Long-term gameplay in TS4

"@SimAlexandria;c-17558844" wrote:
I obviously play it differently.

I've played the same family (with aging alternating between long and off) for 3.5 years, over 1000 hours. I watched it start as a couple when I created them to becoming a family with 9 children (some which have grown up and moved out, 5 of those are adopted). The youngest kids have become young adult recently but still playing the same generation. Haven't gotten bored yet.

I write stories and then recreate them. They live in Sulani and attend festivals 3-4x a week, the dad is a stay at home father, the mum writes books, the mum and oldest daughter go on trips to the jungle as both are very interested in archaeology, they enjoy the day-to-day island life.
I keep needs/money cheated up as I have no interest in a "Grinding" game, I play more to tell stories and simulate life.

I think this is brilliant! It seems like a very relaxing game play style. Fair play for playing the same family for 3.5 years.

I'm unable to do that but not because I'm bored. I build a lot and when I'm not building, I'm constantly inspired to tell a different story and to create new sims. My stories are very much character driven, so when I play out a story, sometimes things turn out differently than intended. At times that's great, sometimes it's not, because of how the environment reacts to that situation.

For me personally it's important that the sim reacts based on their personality and how they learn from the environment, but it doesn't always work that way, because that system is not really in place.

I'm quite nitpicky about sim personalities, and much less about other aspects of the game.