Ways to make the game more interesting (apart from challenges)

Maybe since challenges are not your thing, you can focus more on creating stories that you play out. For me, I feel like challenges help generate storylines.

There are also build challenges that you might find interesting (I see in your signature that you like building).

I cannot help but recommend the Build a City Challenge because it's helping me to think differently about how Sims can live while building a town one lot at a time.

Maybe think about what kind of things you normally do in the game, and try to avoid those things specifically and see how else your Sims can live their lives. I've never really played with the Off-the-Grid lot trait, my Sims always have careers, and I generally renovate rather than build lots. With the BACC, I'm playing Off-the-Grid, none of my Sims are in careers, and I'm building everything from the ground up. It's fun because it's a change from the normal things I do in the game.

When it comes to game challenges, I too just don't get very far and do not find them enjoyable. Something I do though is I took a brand new game save, turned off all aging, and turned off culling. Went through and completely gave every single sim and lot a complete makeover according to my liking. (The lady in my avatar with the green shirt, short hair, and hat is Moira Fyres from Wendenburg.) After learning the hard way, keep a copy of the newly updated save in a separate folder. I can't even tell you how many times I had to start over because of accidentally playing that save in gameplay. Whenever a new pack is added, go through every lot and maybe sims, and add some new aspect of that pack.

If there is something I want to do to a certain lot, will play a copy of the save, make the changes, save the lot, and then place it in the game save that has not been played. Don't bother with upgrades because that does not save through to the library.

I created a list of events that I use when I am bored. I just select one randomly from time to time to make my save more interesting :)

Since you don't like loading screens maybe you can rotational play if you don't already, especially in areas you haven't had your sims live in before so it doesn't get stale. I tend to start my sims in certain hoods but it's usually refreshing to me to force myself to do something unfamiliar and often I learn something about an area I didn't see before. Personally I like the day to day including jogging, collecting and gardening and fishing and I like getting familiar with the different areas doing this it's always fun to me to look at areas from a different perspective.

I also really like the work from home or living off the land and sim skills possibilities those can often tie in well for sims that don't like to leave home.

Clubs are great too once you meet other sims (or to draw them in) I especially like them for helping to complete aspirations, make money or just cause drama/havoc for my sims.

Some challenges are fun to me if less challenging and more about seeing things you haven't before. More like game guidelines than challenges. I did one where I made two roomate sims with opposite traits you had to advance them in their career and skills but only play one a week for about a sim year. It was fun to me to see how the other roomate slipped or succeeded when I wasn't controlling them. I also got to see more of what the sims traits do this way since I couldn't micromanage them every second I played.

I'm not a big mod user but sometimes I start a save just to experience a mod... especially one that changes or adds to gameplay. I usually strip the mods out later but it was a different way to play for awhile.. and if I limit it to one save it's not a big loss when you take that mod out.

Mostly my advise is to .. play a different or slightly different way. It helps me get out of a rut anyway.

I have a couple different saves
#1 is a rotation based on two families - now I am up to 6 families. I just play them sometimes let the game decide what happens. This is one that has a few mods but nothing crazy.

#2 is my ginger challenge started with one red hair and his job was to make as many red haired children with as many NPCs as he could lol. We currently have gen 3 being toddlers (with more toddler aunts and uncles lol) Last count I think Atticus had like 20 offspring. I at one time had MCC paying out child support - I had to stop as he was always broke and couldn't feed the offspring that lived with him. The goal of this challenge is to see if the sim world will become all red heads eventually. There are currently 4 households that I play with this save.

#3 is my alien one I have MCCC alien abduction set really high and again trying to see if the whole sim worlds will eventually be aliens or hybrids.
Currently I haven't played this one in a while and only 2 or 3 households - lots of alien children running around though

#4 is my rotation with an unmentionable mod

#5 was my Strangerville game play

Thing with challenges is lot have a lot of IMO unnecessary and nonsensical rules, presumably to make them more difficult because they are made by people who only play challenges and do so all the time. So I tend to just take challenge rules as a guideline, its much more fun that way.

Although there are a couple of challenges that are so insanely complex I still haven't figure out how to actually play them so I can decide what rules are necessary.

The BACC is my first challenge and I’ve found myself enjoying the rules, bending the rules, and reshaping rules to suit my gameplay goals. If you feel stressed about a rule, you can try to ignore the rule and continue on with your gameplay.

Thanks for all the suggestions, they're very much appreciated :) Now that some of you mentioned it, I like the idea of changing the rules of challenges a bit, since many of them seem really unfun to me with their original rules (i.e. living on the same lot all throughout the legacy challenge). Maybe I'll also just spend some time just building and looking for stuff I've never done before. Nice ideas everyone, I'll keep them in mind next time I start the game! :)

I like using some challenges to start a new game but then I don't continue to follow them really. It's just a loose guideline. Like the 100 baby challenge for one. It is NOT fun to me to have baby after baby after baby. So I made it a longer goal of hitting 100 babies but doing it at a more reasonable pace. Playing the families out more in depth. I even let my matriarch work. They might only have 4 or 5 kids in total but that's ok. I don't care about hitting 100 within the least amount of generations. I'll get there when I get there. :)

"juliekaye;c-17431861" wrote:
I like using some challenges to start a new game but then I don't continue to follow them really. It's just a loose guideline. Like the 100 baby challenge for one. It is NOT fun to me to have baby after baby after baby. So I made it a longer goal of hitting 100 babies but doing it at a more reasonable pace. Playing the families out more in depth. I even let my matriarch work. They might only have 4 or 5 kids in total but that's ok. I don't care about hitting 100 within the least amount of generations. I'll get there when I get there. :)

That's why I'd probably use a male sim for the 100 baby challenge, since they can just make baby after baby without even having to interact with them at all, as long as the mom doesn't live in the same household