Thoughts On Aging / Lifespan

Aging is off, it depends on your story, I don't allow my sim's to grow up until it's time for that point in the story.
Until their story is over, and they're played their role.

I've always done aging off from the get-go, whether by the toggle in TS4 or the code in TS2. The EA/Maxis idea of sim life span/age stage lengths is unrealistic. The only times I go with the company rule is with babies and toddlers, as I want to get them out of those stages as quickly as possible. I have a short fuse with rug-rats, even sim ones.

I turn off auto age when I want to practice my sims skills and need time to level. However with seasons coming I want them to experience all the seasons so I’ll be increasing the life span. I don’t usually feel rushed but if I do I quickly turn to age off.

I usually play on long lifespan, but I turn ageing off in between. Then turn it back on. Then manually age people with certain time distances between them if I feel they should be older by now, which usually means I have to age up some of the sims around them too xD Anyway, I feel that anything below long is too short for me, and sometimes long is too long. If you are not against using mods I'd get the newest version of MCCC (so wait til it was updated after Seasons) as it allows you to set the number of days per life stage just like you could in TS3. It's a pretty neat addition. MCCC is generally a neat addition.

I play on long lifespan for my rotational save because it gives me more time to get things done with my Sims. I have one set at normal which could change because I want my generation 2 heir to be able to finish her adult lifetime wish when the time comes
The other save is currently only on long to get toddler skills up, but once that's done I may switch back to normal. Last time I did that the number of days they had until aging up was divided by four because the normal lifespan is one-fourth the length of the long lifespan.

I turn off aging until I feel like I have developed stories for my Sims. Once they feel like they have developed personalities I turn aging on.

I play on Long. In Sims 3 I played on EPIC, using the sliders to hone each age-stage to my preference. Without the sliders, I simply age them up whenever I'm ready for it to happen.

The only time I've ever played Sims4 on Normal, was when I did Pinstar's Legacy Challenge and it's part of the 'rules'.

Here's what you do. Make a back-up of your game and then switch to Long. If it does something funky, you can use your back-up game to undo it. I don't play with Aging Off and haven't since Sims2. So far, Long has given me more than enough time to accomplish what I need. The only thing I would caution you on, is to NOT age up a Sim in cas.fulleditmode. I lost a Sim just recently doing that. Seems all the days I've played a Sim on Long, get added together when you use CAS to age them up. Had I known that I would have simply used MCCC to do the job. My bad. Aged him up to Elder and poof, he was gone that quickly. :open_mouth:

The good news is, I've restarted this entire rotation save, which will allow me to enjoy Seasons with this group of families. :)

Best of luck, and I hope I've helped.

I always turn aging off. I don't want a game full of dying people.

"citysimmer;c-16543041" wrote:

"SimTrippy;c-16542542" wrote:
I usually play on long lifespan, but I turn ageing off in between. Then turn it back on. Then manually age people with certain time distances between them if I feel they should be older by now, which usually means I have to age up some of the sims around them too xD Anyway, I feel that anything below long is too short for me, and sometimes long is too long. If you are not against using mods I'd get the newest version of MCCC (so wait til it was updated after Seasons) as it allows you to set the number of days per life stage just like you could in TS3. It's a pretty neat addition. MCCC is generally a neat addition.

How do you that? I have MCCC and never knew this could be done :o

Maybe I remember it wrong but I thought you could do that. I'd have to take a look again xD I hope I didn't cause any misinformation

Here it is: https://deaderpool-mccc.com/#Top

Go to Documentation -> MC Command Center

I think you will find all the info there about how to set life spans! :)