There’s no right or wrong way to play as long as you enjoy what you do.
I definitely get bored when I play the same type of game each time. Usually, I set up a story with one household and play it out until I run out of ideas, then end the game until some new inspiration comes along. Wash, rinse, repeat. That usually gets me a few months of playtime for each save, with a period of inactivity until something new strikes me. In TS3, I had a household that I kept moving to new saves just to try out different stories with them. That worked for a couple of years, actually. I don’t do legacy families, challenges, or strictly rotation play, and my game isn’t heavy on careers and achievements.
Having said all that, my current save is over 3 years old, now, and is still going strong. The difference is that, instead of just playing one household out, I set up a whole world with interesting characters. When one household gets a bit dull, I can switch to a different one and work on their story for some variety. And, since they’re all connected in one large story, they feed into each other’s individual stories. I can expand Morgyn’s ever growing mastery of his unique powers, visit Oberon at the Blue Moon and see who shows up there, check in on Musette and Eldon who are raising triplet fairy toddlers, take Guidry to a festival to flirt with anything that moves, give Rowen the Cursed Spellcaster some help with his crush on Lilith Vatore, follow my alien or vampire hunters, run Johnny Zest through the Strangerville mystery, enlist help for Nalani’s ocean preservation efforts, and many more stories that are available in the world. When we get bands, I have one made up and ready to go. For the new stuff pack, I plan to make a crystal vendor to play that pack out. They’ll slot right in to the “occult” part of my game.
I play with aging off, so I have time to hang out in this world. I also have tight control over Neighborhood Stories, with it turned off for my main households, customized for secondary households, and fully on for randoms and premades that aren’t really a part of the narrative. I feel that gives me a nice balance between playing my world on my terms, and providing a sense of active change. Basic skills are cheated in for played households. I’m not spending time learning to make grilled cheese sandwiches. And, since I don’t really play jobs/careers, money is cheated in to reflect the sim’s financial status. Jobs and careers depend on the sim. Morgyn hasn’t got a “job.” But Oberon runs a tavern, and Johnny Zest is trying to make it big as a comedian. In Strangerville.
So, I guess my suggestion would be to include all of your ideas into one save with a larger concept, and just keep adding them in. That way, you can play through new ideas and revisit older ideas anytime you want, but your game keeps growing and developing. This approach has worked great for me, and I find myself enjoying my game much more consistently than before.
