Mods and what to do without them?

Only mod I REALLY need is MCCC , if playing with single sim household, I play free will off, so there I do not even need that, other but story progression.

But as lately I have played with pretty large households, I like to have free will on, and then I "need" my other mods. But with heavy tuning with the autonomy scan, I could do that too, with only MCCC on.

As I do not care about whims, those are more likely extra points for aspiration rewards.

So there's this aspiration challenge that @mcrudd posted here, just an idea of a casual way to guide your play without mods - doing aspirations is a great way to find some purpose in your game play, I've found. And earning reward traits is always super motivating for me. There are also a lot of cheats you can use too if you're wanting to tweak things in your game. I *might* be able to live without mods, but I couldn't live without cheats haha.

(That being said, I play a heavily modded game, so it would be a big adjustment for me to just stop using them)

Without mods this game is not worth it IMO. Even if one were to exclude all gameplay mods, there are just too many good tweaks and fixes that make the game better. My PC is older and is working just fine with tons of mods, so I heavily doubt it is mods that cause issues. But yeah - mods, mods and mods. Otherwise I would have quit the game long, long time ago.

I play a vanilla game. I play a large rotation, every household is different and they work on different skills and things. They interact with many other characters in my rotation. I have all the packs and kits, but no CC or mods. Active careers are one thing that tends to make the game more interesting for me, that, and clubs. There is still so much I haven’t even explored yet, and @Chazzzy I rarely come across occult’s much in my game. I tend to make many venues for them to frequent. If I want my sims to take a vacation, I usually make a holiday called vacation. I play with aging turned off most of the time. Sometimes I will focus on careers, sometimes I focus on children’s clubs, other times on teens. With so many families, it makes a game less boring, if I do get bored I can always go into manage worlds and change the townies up a bit giving them a set of new clothes and hairstyles. get rid of ones I don’t like and make new ones, go in and change up my venues, or download and redo some I have down loaded, or occasionally make my own. For many rabbit hole careers I will make work places, like an office building, that has an office, that my CEO, other business sims, lawyers etc. can use. One 20x15 lot has an office building with the top floor an office, and a reception office, the next floor an office with several computers for my techies, and a coffee machine. The main floor has Bathrooms, a waiting are with bookcases, and sofa’s and a children’s play area. The first basement floor has a cafeteria (cafe), and a mini kitchen and bar with a workout room, massage area and steam room. The next floor, has a CEO suite, and the bottom floor has a spy headquarters for my secret agents, and a laundry mat. Outside in back is a small pool, with a meditation stool. On the very top is a Bar-B-Que area with a table, grill and bar. I have this lot marked as cafe, so others will show up to the lot as well as the household i take. This way if I want my sim to interact with others they can. I can take them by household, or by clubs, and virtually every sim including toddlers have something to do. There are so few lots in the game, many of my lots hold several functions. I have a science lot marked generic, but could be marked bar also, I downloaded this venue long ago, and have added to it. It has rocket ships, and a telescope on top ( open top floor ). The second floor has bathrooms, a mission control area ( with several computers, like an air control center), another area has several telescopes, with a reception desk with computer leading in, and break area with a revenue machine, a cupcake machine, microwave, and coffee machine, and a table for breaks. Up front is a bar area. The main floor is partly outside with a picnic table, grill, meditation stool, and yoga mat.... it also has a dumpster and recycler. The inside area of this floor has a mini arcade with the different arcade games. The other inside half has some children’s lab sets. I added basements to it. One basement floor has a small bedroom, and bath area, and and area for sales/company meetings, with sofa, chairs, etc. and I recently added a children’s playroom, with even a tiny room for a toddlers bed and I also added restrooms with a toddler toilet as well. One basement floor room is made for scientists, another for archeologists, so it like many other venue lots are multifunctional, many have at least one bedroom so I can take entire households there and some can get sleep for their job, while another is working on a skill, and others are socializing, doing work homework, or accruing fun. I made a retail mall and hospital, for doctors, shoppers and teens. I have downloaded 3 different other retail malls, none of the malls have bedrooms, but have various shopping places and ways to have fun. One of my nightclubs has a hotel so my DJ can work while others in the household, eat, sleep, or do homework. I find one way to add fun to my game is to have various things to do with various sims at one time, my sims go other places a lot, because I can fulfill most of their needs one way or other, and it makes the game more interesting and fun. I find Imagination also adds to the fun as well as so many different household with different interests.

Maybe you could go into more detail on what exactly is happening with your laptop.

Like @haneul said, CC is usually the culprit that causes issues due to the shear amount people have, the high poly counts (not sure if you are an alpha or maxis match person) and of course the HD textures (if you have them).

Is your laptop overheating?
Is the game slowing down?
Is it taking forever for the game to load?

How much memory does your laptop have?
How much free space on the drive does it have?

I don't currently use any mods in my game and haven't for a while, though I have in the past. Sometimes, I find the Sims autonomous actions enormously frustrating, but I guess I've mostly learnt to roll with the punches and adapt my gameplay style to be more of a micro-manager. I hope that's at least a little bit inspiring? Probably not. Anyway, good luck! Sorry :)

@SheriSim57 sounds like you're having a great time with your game. These are the types of posts I love to read because I get so many ideas for my own gameplay. Time to add some multifunctional lots. ?

My advice is to simply use all the features you have available to make each household and lot as interesting as possible. For my sims I make sure all of them, even the households I don't play or interact with, have appropriate relationships/sentiments, careers, skills/hobbies, clubs, weather preferences, reputation, fame, degrees, lifestyles, and character value traits. For all my lots, residential and community, I make sure each has a solid collection of activities, exclusive club hangouts, lot traits, NAP's, Eco Footprint, and appropriate utility sources. I also like to balance out the variety of lot types available throughout the worlds, my favourites being vacation lots, Community Spaces, Arts Centres, Cafes, Restaurants and Retail shops. I find when all these features are established throughout the entire game is when the best of the Sims 4's vanilla gameplay comes to life, seeing how all these elements bounce off and influence each other is always interesting, and at times, extremely chaotic.