5 years ago

Rotational gameplay tips + show your spreadsheets

Hi fellow simmers and friends :smile:

I am a rotational player who plays all the worlds at once, but I sometimes get frustrated with some of the features, so I thought it could be nice to have a topic where we could all add our tips for how to have the best experience. Also, please feel free to mention any mods that you find useful for this type of gameplay.

I would also really love to see how the other players manage their households and keep track of everything, I currently only have a very basic spreadsheet with names, worlds, traits, aspirations. But I would really like to see what else could I track and how. I love micro-managing everything :smiley:

Here are some of my tips that came to mind:

1. Renovate and rebuild all lots and update all lots with new objects from all packs, for me personally, I just really enjoy visiting community lots more when I know that my sims will have a lot to do there. Of course I still have some of the premade lots or lots downloaded from the gallery, because it is a year long project to update everything. But in 90% of the time my sims only go to the venues and lots that are updated.

2. This might not be the case for everyone, but I hate premade sims, so I deleted all of them and replaced them with mine, because it makes me actually care for them and be excited to even see them passing by. It's actually fun and kinda scary to see the sims you care about getting into fights, etc. when you are just a bystander. I created a lot of npcs, so the game could use them instead of creating more randoms. With NPCC mod you can even set that your households will be used as npcs instead just sims from other households. I used to have it for quite a while, but then it kinda broke the immersion when I was actively playing these sims, so I changed it, so now only my npcs are used instead.

3. Try giving all of your sims different careers, and let some of them run their own stores, restaurants, vet clinics, etc. There is an awesome mod that let's sims keep their stuff that they buy in your store when you are actively running it. Seeing all of my sims shop there is just sweet and I am already excited to see their inventory after I switch to them. It's just a little thing that adds a lot to my gameplay.

4. I play with aging on only for my active household, occasionally on for npcs.

Some of the things I would love to know:
1) how many days do you play each household? - I don't have a certain amount of days set, but I am thinking about changing that to be more consistent.

2) What is the best time to switch between household - do you change it based on your sim's work hours, so their performance doesn't drop?

And anything else that comes to mind, I just want to look for some kind of inspiration to implement in my own gameplay.

I hope everyone is having peaceful holidays :heart:

tips

17 Replies

pv-rodriguesds
5 years ago
Hello there, happy holidays! ??

I think you will also find good material about rotational at this thread: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/979839/how-do-you-rotational-play/p1

But I always love to write about rotational play and I'm kinda of obsessed with it ? First, let me answer your questions:

1) I used to play one week before switch households but now I'm testing two weeks in a row. I want to know if it is more consistent on relationships (less culling – I don't use mods) and on experience the seasons itself.

2) To be honest, I always switch at 6AM without really care if my Sims will lose some work performance due to be out of work when starts its turn on rotation.

Second, some tips or observations that I made playing rotational:

- Use lot traits as reward to your Sims to leave home and do activities and social out
- Also use lot traits to set benefits to huge or expensive lots and to motivate you to move Sims there on long term. You can do the inverse and set penalties for cheap lots
- Move personal items to Sims inventories because they will use it when on lots
- If you feel that your Sims emotions are out control, try to let'em loose for a while. I noticed that emotions tend to be more consistent or natural when you don't force moodlets
- Rotational play takes time to reveal all of its benefits, but it worth if you like that kind of community overview. I like to play with long lifespan and 28 days seasons length because I can chill while watch my Sims do their things at their time
- Whims tend to increase its diversity over time because of new interactions you unlock, different scenarios that happens, different items around, etc. I tend to let my Sims loose and help them to accomplish their whims (and aspirations on long term)
Disquietism
5 years ago
Thank you for the link, I was trying to find another thread with rotational play, but couldn't, so I will definitely check it out.

And thanks for the awesome tips, the lot reward traits never occurred to me, I generally only use lot traits on community lots.
Now when you mention it, playing full seasons span to experience all seasons is kinda awesome, I think I will steal that idea :)
For whims I use whim overhaul mod, so I do play with whims and it is fun.
I read that 6am is quite popular time for household switch among rotational players, I think I will try it too as before I just switched randomly XD
RouenSims
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
I don't use spreadsheets at all or have any particular order. I just play whoever, doing whatever, whenever. I have more than 300 Sims but I remember them all, because I'm obsessed with my Sims, lol.

1) how many days do you play each household? - I don't have a certain amount of days set, but I am thinking about changing that to be more consistent.
There is absolutely no consistency. Sometimes I play one for a few minutes; sometimes I play one for a few weeks. Sometimes I return to them again after a couple of days, and sometimes I don't come back to them for a year. It's just whatever seems fun to me right then.

2) What is the best time to switch between household - do you change it based on your sim's work hours, so their performance doesn't drop?
This is probably the only thing I do try to be consistent with. I hate coming into a household where all the members are late for work or school, so I try to switch right after 2am. I switch after 2 because when I switch before 2, it might be a holiday, and then the new household would have no time to keep the holiday from being terrible for them. But I'm not always consistent with this either. I might get too tired to wait until 2am to shut off the game, and then not feel like playing that household anymore.

I play with all aging off. I have lots of personal rules for particular Sims. For example, I've decided that my ghost mannequin Sim can't be seen by other Sims (except for two), so I don't let him socialize. Then I have other Sims who are extremely polite and will introduce themselves to everybody, even the weirdest townies.
Disquietism
5 years ago
@Rouensims Yeah, I wasn't very consistent with rotating as well, but then I feel a bit guilty that some of my families aren't played as much as others XD

And yeah, creating lots of various small personal rules for the game is awesome, I have quite a lot of rules for vampires. Generally the only occult sims I have are vamps and ghosts. I don't mind alien abductions if they happen, but I have no desire to create alien sims and have them in my save unless it happens naturally through abduction. And if one of my sim will express want to create a robot, I would totally do it, but otherwise only vamps and ghosts for me please. Currently I have two ghosts.
Disquietism
5 years ago
Yesterday I finally switched settings for 28 days for each season and I had to redo all of my custom holidays. Here is what I have now :)

SPRING:
Love day
Dance night
Get fit day
Welcoming spring
Parent’s day
Animals are friends day
Spring cleaning

SUMMER:
Self care day
Hobby day
Little ones day
Summer Solstice
Summer holiday
Family day
Sim equality pride
Sulani Herritage day

AUTUMN
Earth day
Harvest day
Art apreciation day
Remembering the lost
Samhain
Vampire pride
Science day

WINTER
Cozy day
Extreme day
Snow holiday
Yule
New year’s Eve
Be kind day
Movie night
guilhermesvf
5 years ago
My main tip is: avoind pairing up people that don't live in the same world. Like, its ok for 1 or 2 people to date online and have a distant relationship, but in real life most of those relationships fail when they turn into long-term distant relationships. If they are distant in the short term, they might work better, but also... not everyone moves town/country. So, I don't have a system of mine to "randomize" someone that would date and move worlds, I just roll a dice and see if it tells me yes or no.
Edit.: I forgot to say that sometimes i don't use the dice at all, if my sim likes to travel and meet new people, I just follow their personalities and let them move elsewhere.
Of course, you can play whoever you want, but its more realistic like that and it helps me to focus on creating relationships with people from the same town when the game does the opposite.
permanentrose537
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
"Yautjagirl;c-17762018" wrote:
Yesterday I finally switched settings for 28 days for each season and I had to redo all of my custom holidays. Here is what I have now :)

SPRING:
Love day
Dance night
Get fit day
Welcoming spring
Parent’s day
Animals are friends day
Spring cleaning

SUMMER:
Self care day
Hobby day
Little ones day
Summer Solstice
Summer holiday
Family day
Sim equality pride
Sulani Herritage day

AUTUMN
Earth day
Harvest day
Art apreciation day
Remembering the lost
Samhain
Vampire pride
Science day

WINTER
Cozy day
Extreme day
Snow holiday
Yule
New year’s Eve
Be kind day
Movie night

Those are awesome holidays! Very fitting for each season too
Sharooonia
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
I don’t have a spread sheet. I have a list of each family that I’ve played so I know which order to play them and I play each family for a sim year on the calendar before rotating to a different household. I have my seasons set at 14 days each. I play with all the pre-made sims that are currently in the game and a few of my own making.
Scobren
Legend
5 years ago
I don't spread sheet it out either. I just play the family I'm in the mood playing. I also have a death save file and a build save file.
Disquietism
5 years ago
"Forgeron;c-17762344" wrote:
My main tip is: avoind pairing up people that don't live in the same world. Like, its ok for 1 or 2 people to date online and have a distant relationship, but in real life most of those relationships fail when they turn into long-term distant relationships. If they are distant in the short term, they might work better, but also... not everyone moves town/country. So, I don't have a system of mine to "randomize" someone that would date and move worlds, I just roll a dice and see if it tells me yes or no.
Edit.: I forgot to say that sometimes i don't use the dice at all, if my sim likes to travel and meet new people, I just follow their personalities and let them move elsewhere.
Of course, you can play whoever you want, but its more realistic like that and it helps me to focus on creating relationships with people from the same town when the game does the opposite.

Yes, I don't mind my sims dating sims from other worlds, except for Sulani and Mt.Komorebi, I try to contain Sims from these worlds as they are more far away and speak different languages. But if my currently active sims developed interest/romance with sim from another world I would try to fit it into the story :) Windenburg is also a different country in my game, but since I currently only have one household there and they are married already it doesn't matter much.