What makes gameplay enjoyable to you?

I will check out your gallery! We may be talking about the same types of houses for sure.

I have a whole thread about the 1920s catalog homes on this forum, including the houses I built along with the original photos and plans. All the houses listed on the thread are on my gallery as well. Maybe you can find a smaller one you like there!

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/896967/catalog-homes-of-the1920s/p1

1. Randomizing traits of every sim and basing their life around that.
2. Not worrying about my sim being perfect, and letting them have their imperfections.
3. Not being afraid of death. Do dangerous things like fixing a broken computer, and let sims do dangerous things autonomously.
4. Playing different types of households. Roommates, siblings, young parents, old parents, adopted children, divorced sims, 1 child, 7 children, gay couples, single parents, polyamory, kicked out teens, poor sims, unemployed sims, etc. I let every generation be unique in some way.
5. Not messing with genetics, and seeing how Sim's looks evolve through the generations.
6. Letting things just happen. If a sim cheats or the relationship bar is going down with their partner, break up/divorce. It may not be realistic to break up just because of a fight, but it sure makes interesting gameplay.
7. Go places, make friends, join clubs.
8. Get hundreds of mods and CC. As much as your game can handle.

For me, I rotate between many households without a fixed schedule. These households all have interconnected back stories. When I'm inspired to create a new sim, usually him/her will also join my main gameplay, but normally as potential spouses/friends instead of sims that I actually play.

I like to play out the storyline that I planned for them, but I also like to let the game surprise me. Creating drama between sims/households is also fun, but there are some households that I want them to stay clear of any drama.

I also love adding family members to my sims and the premades. It adds much depth to the gameplay and it makes their storylines more complicated and interesting. Most families I played are flawed. Some of them might look like a perfect family on the outside, but maybe the parents are too controlling, so their children barely has any freedom in their career/live choices. Some family lives a perfect life right now, but drama are about to explode.

I used to play a lot of upper-middle class families, but now I like to try out different kinds of households. I have a sim who lives in a trashy starter home (under 20k, and has a wishing well, which is about 7k I think), and have only 300 simoleons in her pocket. She used to live in a very comfortable apartment, but now she runs out of money. She still pays for expensive dinners with her boyfriend though, even if she'd have to sell furniture to pay her bill. Despite her strong wish to be rich, I still let her stay in poverty, because that's weird and fun.

"brackencat31;c-16511377" wrote:
I love rotating around a few different families, when there kids move out, I add them to the rotation. I ve lots of little stories going on, I just love playing this way.

This! I love to have the different families lives intermingle, see my sims out & about in the world, & have their offspring grow up to marry each other & have their own children.

"hunniboo1;d-940934" wrote:
Sorry if you see so many posts from me...just still in the hospital bored

I found that if I document my sims lives and take pictures to keep share their story I find it more interesting to play

Ditto!
I do the same thing. :)
I have a thread dedicated to it. It really helps. It's probably about 80% Let's Play and 20% Story.
Sometimes when I can't get into playing, I review my thread instead.
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/918301/ck213s-ts4-favorite-simming-moments-growth-spurts-pg-05/p1

One of my favorite things is browsing the gallery. I love seeing what kinds of houses and sims people have managed to create. I like to take a house or lot, and place it, and spend a while tinkering with it, and making it just a little different. And I like for my build style to change over time, so that not everyone has the same house or the same feel to a house. All the combinations that I haven't seen or used or thought of are fun to discover.

I'm moving into generational play, but slowly. I do have some favorite sims that I come around to in rotation. I definitely keep auto aging off nowadays unless it's just time.

Drama. It was very dramatic weekend in my sims world, I can’t stop thinking about it :) I’m rotational player, lots of drama in my game. This weekend one sim died from laughing too much. He left young wife and two children. The wife moved on very fast. She is married to the new hot neighbor, but at nights she is meeting with her ghost husband who is her boyfriend now

I like to kill my sims

I love storytelling and trying to capture beautiful scenery as well as emotional Sim interactions/expressions. I enjoy having my Sims learn new things and build up their character around hobbies, clubs, social life and job. Sometimes, I feel like disturbing the waters and write it into the story. Life isn't always a bed of roses and that goes for my Sims, too.

Completing whims to move the story forward.
Custom Content and mods.
Storytelling.
As I have said many times, Clubs.
Vacations.
Building the perfect venue.
Building the perfect home.
So I guess creating and more creating.
Seeing and reading about what other players do in their games. (Inspiration)
Reading Sims stories.
Watching Let's Play videos.
Going back and watching trailers.
Reading the blogs the guru's put out. These two things help to inspire me to do different things in my game. When I watch live streams sometimes I think "Oh I didn't know that." or "I have to try that." And then I add it to my game play and low and behold, it's usually as fun as they make it look.