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Ernie15
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Ernie15
13,344 posts
Bard

Many of us have played this legendary PC series, but for whatever reason, none of us have gone as far as to create a thread about it. That is, not until now.

If you're a player of the Sims 1, 2, and/or 3, and you feel the need to discuss it like I do, look no further. If you enjoy these games but you're drawing a blank on what to say, here are a few questions to get your Sims mind jogging:

How do you play the Sims (1, 2, 3); what are your strategies?
What is your favorite Sims game?
What is your favorite part of [Sims game]?
What is the worst part of [Sims game]?
How long have you been playing Sims games?
How far is heaven?

You don't have to answer any of these questions if you don't feel the need to. Anything Sim-related will suffice.

  • 12 Replies
pangtongshu
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pangtongshu
9,808 posts
Jester

How do you play the Sims (1, 2, 3); what are your strategies?


Last time I played I was a young teen going through puberty. If I remember correctly, all my characters were made to play out lesbian fantasies.
gh0sts
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gh0sts
865 posts
Shepherd

I played this briefly when it first came out. I enjoyed it for the most part, but some of the expansions caused the game to stop working on my computer and I just gave up on it. Never played the second or third ones.

What is your favorite part of [Sims game]?


I really liked gardening in Unleashed. That whole expansion was great. The pets, the music, the lots you could visit. It made the original game look so dry and plain.
Ernie15
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Ernie15
13,344 posts
Bard

Last time I played I was a young teen going through puberty. If I remember correctly, all my characters were made to play out lesbian fantasies.


I'm sure if the game had existed when I was that age, my experience would not be largely different from yours.

It made the original game look so dry and plain.


If you think one Sims expansion pack made the original Sims look ordinary, you should have seen the Sims 2, and eventually the Sims 3. You could do a lot more than just garden, raise pets, and....listen to music.
CherryCoke360
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CherryCoke360
407 posts
Nomad

My sims always died.. I never really grasped the whole concept of keeping them alive.. ahaha but its sad. i was a kid though..

Fuzio
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Fuzio
63 posts
Nomad

How do you play the Sims (1, 2, 3); what are your strategies?


I use hacks to give my sims way too much money, and I put them in glorious mansions to make their neighbors jealous.

What is your favorite Sims game?


I played all 3 but the Sims 3 is the best one for me.

What is your favorite part of [Sims game]?


Of the Sims 3 my favorite part would be being able to go anywhere you want at any time and not be so confined to your house. All you had to do was go to the map and click on the destination and there you are!

What is the worst part of [Sims game]?


I always hate how you can only have 8 people in a family. All the time I wanted to create big families and watch them all grow up together!

How long have you been playing Sims games?


I played all 3, maybe since I was 8. I sucked so bad at the game back then but I got better before the Sims 2 came out. I stopped playing maybe a year after I got the Sims 3.

How far is heaven?


Eat some chocolate and you will find it!
gh0sts
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gh0sts
865 posts
Shepherd

If you think one Sims expansion pack made the original Sims look ordinary, you should have seen the Sims 2


I got too frustrated with the series before 2 came out. One day it just stopped working, and I tried to fix it, but it was to no avail. I never played Sims again.
Ernie15
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Ernie15
13,344 posts
Bard

My sims always died.. I never really grasped the whole concept of keeping them alive.. ahaha but its sad.


If you're going to kill your Sims, you might as well do it the "classic" way--the old swimming pool with no ladder gag. It's essentially the same idea--they starve to death--but it works regardless of whether free will is on.

If you want quicker results, set the house on fire somehow, don't put in a smoke detector, and they should parish within a minute's time. In the Sims 2, there's a decorative device that spits fire into the air. Great for parties. If you put one of these inside, however, your house will ignite like a match, and you don't even have to wait for your Sims to burn their food.

Or, of course, you could just, you know, by a refrigerator and feed your Sims. That should keep them alive at least as long as they can stay awake. When they start passing out on the floor, you know it's time to buy a bed or two.

I use hacks to give my sims way too much money, and I put them in glorious mansions to make their neighbors jealous.


I used the cheats most of the time, but I wouldn't give my Sims an excess of funds. Just enough to live off of and occasionally buy something. There were a few illustrious mansions in my collections, but not many. There isn't as much you can do with rich Sims, oddly.

Of the Sims 3 my favorite part would be being able to go anywhere you want at any time and not be so confined to your house. All you had to do was go to the map and click on the destination and there you are!


That was one of the best features of the Sims 3. No longer did you have to use a dropdown menu to access a community lot--although you may not have had to in the original Sims either, I don't remember--and you could visit other Sims in their houses, which was a milestone in building relationships because you didn't have to rely on chance for your Sims to meet other Sims.

I always hate how you can only have 8 people in a family. All the time I wanted to create big families and watch them all grow up together!


Sometimes that got to me, but then I'd think about how hard it would be to control more than 8 at a time. I wasn't great with more than 5 at a time, so I rarely played with 8.

I got too frustrated with the series before 2 came out. One day it just stopped working, and I tried to fix it, but it was to no avail. I never played Sims again.


I'd suggest you get the Sims 3, but that would be a huge jump from the first Sims, so you might get overwhelmed with the transition. Not to mention that it can also be pretty frustrating sometimes.
CherryCoke360
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CherryCoke360
407 posts
Nomad

Haha i havent played in so long, but if i ever get back into it i will take your advice.. xp

Terry_Logic
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Terry_Logic
4,484 posts
Jester

I'm glad I found this thread, because I was thinking about making one to see if there was anyone else who shared an interest in Simology, and apparently such people do exist in this community. For the sake of igniting a discussion about one of my favorite game series of all time, I will answer every question you've provided above with an in-depth answer eventually. For now, just the first question. I don't have time to answer all of them in one night.

How do you play the Sims (1, 2, 3); what are your strategies?


I had different strategies depending on the game. I played all three, and all three games are fairly different, so my playing style differed along with them.

I got the first Sims game when I was 9, and I had no idea how to play it even after watching the tutorials, so for a while, my sims lived in unpainted houses with no floors or windows and with minimal furniture--whatever I could afford with $20,000. I didn't even know sims could get jobs for the longest time, so once I spent all the money in the household--I did a lot of experimenting with useless objects--I played with them until I got bored with what I could do with them. I got so frustrated with this playing style, though, that I eventually got my mom to look up cheat codes, and after that, I rosebudded the hell out of every family I made, and I gave my families great houses with all the finest furnishings, and I did a lot of experimenting with the "move_objects" cheat. I would build houses that extended to the other side of the street and were connected by an indoor walkway built directly above the street. It looked pretty stupid, but it wasn't bad for a 9-year-old's creation.

Then, when I got the Unleashed and Vacation expansions, my playing style became more mature, and my sims actually were able to work for (some of) their money, and I took them on nice vacations until that expansion stopped the entire game from working for me. I was disappointed when I found out I couldn't build my own vacation destinations, but I really only played the game with both expansions for about a month anyway before it stopped working.

Then, when I was 10, I got the Sims 2, which was by far my favorite of the three. I could go on for hours--and I have before in conversation--about why I like the Sims 2 so much, but I'll try and keep it short for the sake of this page.

By this point, I already knew how to take care of sims, so that wasn't a problem for me. I was, however, very impressed with how much more you could do with build mode, so I built a lot of multi-story community lots that served no purpose whatsoever before I started really playing with people. Almost right away, I looked up cheat codes, and I didn't start giving my sims jobs until I was comfortable with the interface. After the Open For Business expansion, my entire playing style changed, and I would turn a few of my sims into rich business owners while my other working class sims became their employees. This was my favorite way of playing, in any sims game, and I was utterly destroyed when I could not install my favorite expansion pack on my newer computer this past winter break.

I could go on about my playing style in every other expansion, but I'd rather keep this post as short as possible for the people who are actually taking the time to read it.

Sims 3 was a huge letdown. It focused more on the individual sims than it did the greater scheme of things, and that made playing the game less fun for me. Other than randomly assigned bosses at work, my sims could not really work for other sims, and that made me less motivated to play. I did like how much you could do with the game, and if there was a way to combine Sims 2 Open For Business and Apartment Life with Sims 3 Ambitions, that would be my ideal Sims game.

I could go into far more detail than this about all of these games, but this post is already too long, and it's almost 4:30 A.M., so I'll cut it off here before I become hysterical with nostalgia.
GeoffreyXIV
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GeoffreyXIV
42 posts
Nomad

Ah yes, the Sims. This game was always a personal favorite in my family. I myself first discovered it right around the time it came out, and I was addicted immediately, as was my wife whom I was not yet married to at the time. We have played all three, and we now have to be very wary of playing it so as to not become addicted once again.

I will not answer every single one of those questions, at least not at this given moment, as I could write an entire novel on my various Sims experiences, but I will highlight a few key points of my playing style.

1) - I always play with free will turned off. There are no exceptions. Free will seems like it should have been created to make the game easier for some people, when in fact, it makes every Sim much harder to control. You send them to do one thing, and they decide they don't wish to do it, so they start on something else, and its usually something unproductive like reading a book or watching television. Meanwhile, you're somewhere else busy with another Sim, and you have no idea what the first Sim has been up to all this time.

2) - I always ultra speed through the current action, not regular ultra speed. Only The Sims 3 has the option to ultra speed through the current action, but nevertheless, it is the most useful tool in the game. The last thing you want is to have five Sims sleeping and one Sim awake that you don't know is awake and is therefore just standing in one place for Sim hours.

3) - If you wish to save money with your Sims, particularly on beds, and you create more Sims than your current house can hold with the beds provided, it can be very helpful to make some of your Sims related to each other. No matter how strong their relationship actually is, brothers and sisters will never object to sleeping in the same bed. You can fit eight Sims in four beds from the beginning and all you have to make sure of is that each Sim is related to at least one other Sim in the household.

Ernie15
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Ernie15
13,344 posts
Bard

Is anyone excited for the Sims 4, which is scheduled to be released sometime this fall?

What is the Sims 4?

I got so frustrated with this playing style, though, that I eventually got my mom to look up cheat codes, and after that, I rosebudded the hell out of every family I made


Luckily, I knew someone from the beginning who owned the game and knew all the cheats (all 2 of them), so I never had to play the "natural" way, even though I did every so often just for the hell of it because building a giant house and furnishing it right away didn't leave room for much playing. Not with the limited interaction options the Sims (1) had to offer.

I did a lot of experimenting with the "move_objects" cheat.


What kind of experimenting? I mostly used that cheat just to move glitched Sims if they got stuck. I did try putting objects on top of other objects, such as putting a stove in a couch or something ridiculous like that, but it served no practical purpose, so I really only turned the cheat on if I wanted to move a Sim, and I would turn it off immediately after. The in-game boundaries were set for a reason, so building or buying something with the cheat still on could cause the area to become inaccessible or the object to become unusable.

After the Open For Business expansion, my entire playing style changed, and I would turn a few of my sims into rich business owners while my other working class sims became their employees.


Venture capitalism was always fun. What types of things did you have your Sims sell? I found that the crafted objects, such as toys, robots, or baked goods, were harder to sell, since they could only be restocked if your Sim had enough of said object in their inventory, which meant the profits could not roll in on their own without extra effort from your Sim's part.

It focused more on the individual sims than it did the greater scheme of things, and that made playing the game less fun for me.


I actually wanted it to focus more on Sims' personalities than it said it did. Aside from a few quirks here and there, such as the evil Sims rubbing their hands together or virtuoso Sims singing in the shower, Sims mostly interacted the same way with each other as they did in the earlier games.

I did like how much you could do with the game, and if there was a way to combine Sims 2 Open For Business and Apartment Life with Sims 3 Ambitions, that would be my ideal Sims game.


I thought the Sims 3 Late Night would be more like Apartment Life, but it came as a shock to me when you could only move one Sim family into an entire apartment building. The Sims 3 really dropped the ball on that one.

1) - I always play with free will turned off.


I also play this way, just so I can have complete control over my Sims. Although, it might be a fun challenge to try and see what you can do with your Sims if you give them a mind of their own.

No matter how strong their relationship actually is, brothers and sisters will never object to sleeping in the same bed.


I can't remember if this was the case in the Sims 2, and in the first Sims, there were no actual blood relationships between Sims, so from my recollections, nobody ever objected to sleeping next to anyone in the same bed. Someone who can access their older Sims games is going to have to verify all of this, especially whether brothers and sisters with a low relationship are willing to share a bed in the Sims 2, as this is too trivial a detail for me to remember from not having played in so long.
GeoffreyXIV
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GeoffreyXIV
42 posts
Nomad

Although, it might be a fun challenge to try and see what you can do with your Sims if you give them a mind of their own.


For an experience closer to real life, this would be the preferred way of playing, but then the purpose of turning free will on almost defeats itself. The problem I've had with free will is that the Sims cannot function entirely on their own and still live a productive lifestyle, so turning it on only seems like a good idea when you have more Sims that you feel capable of controlling. However, because your Sims move much more slowly with free will on, and they only do leisurely activities under free will when they aren't fulfilling basic needs such as hunger, sleep, and toilet, your Sims can actually accomplish more when you have complete control over them, even if you think it's more realistic to play with free will on. If you cannot control more than a certain number of Sims in a household, you require more practice.
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