Unfortunately, that kept making my game crash. I haven't a clue as to why, since it seems everyone else did just fine with it. There is another one, though that isn't quite as extensive as the Sim Wardrobe one. Having the computer download from SW causing me problems made me pretty sad. I'm thinking it's probably not playing nicely with another mod. I haven't the foggiest as to which one.

I forgot to mention that if I get my butt in gear, an agricultural building featuring a whole bunch of PBK fowl is a possibility one day.

When I first started out I didn't really use the pause button and tried to make all my sims happy all the time. Also they did annoying things like make their bed and set down coffee cups two floors up, and wake up in the middle of the night to watch a thunderstorm (which, can be charming now that I think back on it but not for every single one). It was supremely frustrating.

Then I learned to use the pause button and download custom content and it got easier. For the most part I am still a very motives driven player, that is priority number 1 when I crack open to actually play a lot but after joining MTS and reading about interesting things other people did, I incorporated interpretations, LOTS of hacks (ACR one of the most interesting to shake it up), and small little personal rules into my game to make it varied and more fun rather than just a perfect dollhouse of 'born, live, die' on repeat through every generation. I tried giving my sims more unique things to do to break out of that mold and because I have been playing the same neighborhood so damn long, the stories just came naturally through the history of it all.

Adding EPs also changed up gaming styles. Like for the longest time I was on a Mac so AL was not available but i wanted so much to have apartments that I simulated it with modded doors and played one entire household in an 'apartment' in their different areas. Of course, when I got apartment life, I actually stopped that method and played it how the game intended.

With OFB I started taking more of a look at integrated hood playing styles. It was really neat to play a farm family and then see other sims with all that produce in their backpacks to use instead of calling grocery delivery. It gives me a bit of thrill each time I find tomatoes in their inventory.

I used to also not care a whit about my buildings or how they they looked, I'd just plop whatever was necessary for the sim to be happy and functional and play them that way. When I joined MTS and the greater sims community in general, I started seeing all these great pics that inspired me to decorate, pose, think about foreground and background and angles so I continually tied adding that into my game play when I start up the game. I always want a few good shots whether it's from a slice-of-life sim pic, to micro images (close ups of objects), or an interior bedroom I redecorated, or just a neighborhood shot. Learning over the years how to get better in-game pics is probably one of the most fun and rewarding aspects that keeps me motivated in playing.

I once played completely vanilla then when I discovered CC, things changed dramatically. I spent a long while just lurking and downloading and then when I got the SimBlender, it changed how I played my game entirely. Now I have things much rougher for my sims-they have to survive in a world that actively wants them poor and/or dead, and try to have friends and family in the process. Anything that can kill them will, whether it be fire, sickness, starvation from a demanding pregnancy, or a lunatic breaking into their house, stealing what they can carry, then setting fire to what they can't.
[For real, the real fire and arsonist mods have made burglaries deadly and I love it lmao]

At first, I just focused on the Sims themselves. Sometimes they had happy lives, sometimes not, but they also often lived in boxes without roofs or wallpaper and in whatever outfit they aged into. CC changed my play style; I used it to flesh out my Sims' personality, cluttering up the houses of messy Sims, giving a fashion-conscious Sim a wardrobe full of clothes etc. MTS introduced the idea of Sim-directed play, which I incorporated. Things like - "You've queued up the action to flirt with someone in front of your spouse? Okay. It's your life." etc. In the past couple of years, my interest has shifted toward decorating the surrounding neighborhood and storytelling.

started past times playing with the "Learn to Play" section of game. then went through base game's Prima Guide suggestions; though there were variations on some lots. after the Prima Guide suggestions, kind of played like matchmaker with unwed sims.

have similar plans to those this time playing.
currently am "fixing" the pre-made neighborhoods; adding missing resources to the "No Character Data" sims, correcting genetics, correcting/changing family trees. have accomplished a portion of those things.

I always had the same families or constellations but for me it has also changed by adding CC and getting new EPs...I know have different households with different families and I play differently with them. One household is just supernatural creatures/life states and I generally try out weird or funny stuff with them. Then I have "normal" families where I just raise some children and then there are Sims where I also focus on their personality and one specific story for their life

To be honest, my style of playing have changed a lot and still does. I always tend to get bored and test other ways. when I first started to play I did focus on a few sims but when I added more sims it did become impossible so I begun to jump around more. I had a period where my sims was supposed to max the skills but it did take a lot of time so I did let go of that. An other time they was supposed to get as far as they could in their career track but I did get bored of that too. Right now it does feel like I want to get most of my old teenageer sims though uni but I'm sure I will come up whit someting else in the near future.

Wow! How do some of you play with 100+ families without going crazy? I don't even have the patience for the 30 families in my Uberhood. I guess I need to try harder.

Like, Mrmo, my play styling is changing a lot, due to boredom. I'm now doing things that I wouldn't have done years ago. I have given up on playing my own custom sims, and stuck with Pre-mades. Pre-mades are easier and more fun to give a creative background story to, in my opinion.

I was insane in the first place is how.

Back with TS1 my play style was mostly making my sim self and either put her with a current rl boyfriend/crush or some celeb. Sometimes I just filled the hood with celebrity sims to see what happened. I'd yank the premades out of their houses the first thing I did with a hood, to make room for my own. Occasionally I'd torture some sim version of someone I disliked so there were lots of fires and pools w/o ladders.

When TS2 came out I did start out doing pretty much the same there, but I found out about the legacy challenge pretty early on so quickly threw myself into that. I did start a few other challenges too, but the legacies were the only ones I actually finished. My habit of getting rid of the premades and not caring about the Maxis storylines for each hood prevailed for years. I rarely played those hoods at all, most of the time I'd start with just a map. Back then it was a chore to play the satellite families enough to keep their aging in line with the legacy families. My game was always heavily modded and filled to the brim with CC, which was something I'd done ever since TS1.

The non-playables had a big part in me changing my play style to what it is now. At first I was over the moon when I learned how to start hoods based on empty templates, but after having done so many legacies I found I missed seeing the N001 townies and NPCs around. So instead I made CAS versions of them and added backstories and family members and such. That got me thinking I would probably enjoy satellite households more if I engaged more with them in their own right rather than just see them as a means to score more points for the legacy families. And once I started playing whole hoods and getting to know every single sim in them, actually playing the premades and getting involved with their storylines felt like a natural thing to do. That's what I'm still sticking to, even when playing TS3. Getting to connect all the premade hoods into mega- and uberhoods makes it even more fun, imo. I usually turn back time (complete with historical cc and limitations to jobs and technology) and start with the earliest known relatives of the premades, with a few of my own families mixed in, and of course still CAS versions of the NPCs and townies. Still have tons of mods and cc, usually geared towards making things harder, especially money-wise. I've turned into a complete sim history geek and often study timeline theories and info about minor sims barely mentioned in the game series if they get at least a mention somewhere.

Since those massive hoods with all their content makes the game take a long time to load I usually keep a separate game folder with just a handful of mods and completely vanilla CAS/build/buy for when I feel like playing something less complicated. Usually a challenge or two, and then I let the premades' lives take turns that'd be off limits in my regular hoods and mainly just enjoy wacky and dramatic stuff happening with not too much interference from me.

I used to play to get as rich as possible, get to the top of the career, have as many kids as possible, everyone get their lifetime wants, etc. then turn aging off because I didn't want to lose my favorites. And ignore all the rest.

Now I play everyone, turn aging on, let them die, and move onto the next generations. They will always be new favorites. If I didn't let Natalie Hernandez die, I would have never discovered her great-granddaughter Delaney Rusewicz is the spitting image of her.

Also, I haven't created a new sim since I started my hood. I had 12 founding families and with the inclusion of townies, I haven't found an occasion to need anyone new. I used to get bored with my sims (because aging was off and nothing ever happened) and create new sims all the time.

When I was a little kid and first got the game I didn't know what I was doing and didn't paint the walls. Didn't even realize it. Soon enough I discovered cheats, and motherloaded it up for a while. Built really big and usually impractical mansions. At some point they started being okish architectural when I when for rectangles at 90° from each other (or π/2 in RADs :P)
Eventually I stopped using cheats for every family and tried the normal route. Not being good with backups and it being a hassle moving everything before multiple computers, I either lost or gave up safe files rather often. RIP. I had a Riverside going with a couple of families I cared about. Semi let it go moving computers, not a big deal. Now there's one special neighbourhood to me, a version of Carnen Bridge. It was my neighbourhood. With Sims I actually cared about. I have it somewhere backed up to some level. Not too recent though. Moved to a laptop because of the good ole desktop troubles. The severe drop in graphical quality was

Now I don't play. I stopped caring somewhere in my attempts at making an urban neighbourhood. Having that hard drive die was the last straw, though me deciding not to back it up is what's really telling. My real life is revealing far too many things the game is simply incapable of recreating. Proper urban areas are the biggest, but the 2004ness is another issue. No smartphones and social media exist, and while gameplaywise it really doesn't matter much, the world has changed because of them. Bigger is some somewhat vague ideas about school, university, transit, and travel. Also the fact that it's pretty much impossible to recreate either house I've lived in thanks to elevation changes. Actually that's the case with many buildings where I live, because of how floors are designed in game.

And I'm really only here cause the card/tab/whatever is about to drop out of most visited on Google Chrome. So bye community that I lurked through and occasionally posted on for years. Spent a good chunk of late middle school, and a fair bit of high school visiting here. I might be back from time to time, or I might have just moved on for good. Thanks for everything at the very least all you cool people.

PS: Sleep deprived me doesn't care enough to proofread, so uh yeah enjoy the errors. :P

EDIT: And special characters still don't work. It's pi/2 by the way, and 90 degrees.

I've put my game away for months--even years--at a time. But every time I come back to it, I find something new or different that makes it fun again.
Taking a break might be good, but don't give up the game completely. Come back with a new mindset. Urban is not working? Try medieval or old west or an island version. Come at it with all supernaturals or no supernaturals at all. Just come back when you are ready to play again.

I've played vanilla base game for quite some time. My computer back then could barely handle that. Back then, I didn't really know about challenges, but tried out different family constellations.

When I returned to TS2 with a better computer and a few EPs, it didn't take me long to discover the world of CC and the online communities. I have adopted a different play style by playing challenges. Especially through Test of Times I now love regular rotations of all households, something I'd never really tried before. Also, ToT taught me to not micro-manage every single thing. It's really frustrating to try to micro-manage households with 8+ sims and maybe a few pets and guests on the lot, but miraculously they tend to do quite alright without my constant supervision.
Aside from ToT, I also like the BACC and I've adopted the townie challenge as a part of a pseudo-medieval neighborhood I've been playing for some time.
However, I don't play any challenge exactly according to the rules.

And turns out I might not be gone forever after all. Life's busy though, but hey I'll still kinda be around. Thought about playing the game the day after posting, decided schoolwork was more important.
Still I'll probably do what SIMelissa says and just hold off for a while longer.

The first four-five years I had the game, I mostly just made Sims of my original characters. I played with aging off, never did anything really interesting with them, and deleted them when I realised that they didn't look like what I had in mind. Even neighbourhoods got created and tossed out on a regular basis.

When I picked Sims 2 up again, after exclusively playing Sims 3 for a while, I decided I wanted to try a Prettacy. I didn't think I'd like playing legacy style, but it was fun. My early Sims were poor breeding stock, so no babies for them. I must have found a way of improving that, somehow, because I rarely get odd-looking kids nowadays, unless I'm specifically aiming for it. (Which I often do...)

I rely more and more on mods for my game play, especially CC with new functions. Right now, all of my Sims are farmers. I discovered Plumbbob Keep. :D

I don't use any cc apart for nounlinkondelete at the moment.

I removed my Downloads folder temporarily, for an experiment, and when I opened up a lot, I was momentarily confused. The lot looked NOTHING like it's original lot without my CC. Even my Sims looked completely different! It was kind of like entering the Twilight Zone, being in an alternate dimension. Seeing the difference really reminded me how different my game is with all my CC. I don't think I could ever go back to playing vanilla -- though I am really glad I did in the beginning.

I'm doing this at the moment for a crash and I know exactly what you mean! It's so odd to see the life and world you created become something else just by removing content.

Wait, are we agreeing that @ihatemandatoryregister was insane in the first place, or are we agreeing that we were insane in the first place? Because I have no personal knowledge of ihatemandatoryregister's sanity (though the handle is suspicious evidence) but I'm quite sure that I was insane before I started playing massive hoods.

I've tried to play legacies several times, but my natural style seems to be rotational in about week long rotations. One day never seems to quite let me get into what a family is doing, more than seven and I want to go see how everyone who has interacted with them is doing. I like integrated hoods in theory: my computers have never loved the cc load necessary to really make them work. Though I might be able to if I didn't prefer the softer colors of Almighty Hat's default replace all things, so my computer has extra work to do. (Other than the plastic dishes my three-year-old uses, my world is not in crayola colors. It's old china and woodwork and tiles and . . . okay, I wish it were as easy and cheap to replace real wallpaper as sim wallpaper.)

You don't have to have a lot of cc to play an integrated hood. Sims don't have to have Body Shop CC, you can get away with just the items that you need. The rest is just shinnies. :D

I spy with my little eye...a unicorn. Seriously though, I give you a lot of credit for being able to play this way.

I removed my Downloads folder because I'm building CC-free versions of some houses, and it's been a challenge. I didn't think I had that much CC, but I'm starting to realize how much I rely on bedding and curtain recolors. It's really hard to decorate a decent house when there's only one non-hideous curtain option, and maybe 2 beddings suitable for children's rooms.

Lol thanks. I probably would put it back whenever I feel like playing any hood or all of them with mods (even than, I only have 4/5 mods downloaded in that folder). There are some vanilla annoyance, but I just play them off or find a workaround. I use my improvizing ideas.

When I started playing TS2 (way too long ago), I was very young, and I didn't rotate the families. I would create my family (usually only one adult Sim, who would get married, have children, etc), play with it for a while, and then create another family (...), never to return playing with an "old" family again. And of course, no CC, and all the Sims looked pretty much the same. I used to make them very rich with Motherlode and max all their abilities. I never played with the premade neighborhoods since I didn't want to change their Sims and houses, "ruining" them - also because of my rapid boredom. I get sick of the neighborhoods I make very fast since my perfectionism makes the families boring very easily.

Now I play in rotations, without hacks, and there is a lot of drama in my neighborhoods. I also use a few MODs and CC to make my Sims look better and more unique. The problem is I am a control freak and my Sims always get rich, on top of their careers, a magic lamp, platinum, nice looking homes, well-behaving pets, perfect garden with really tasty cucumbers, A+ grades, etc. Even with all the drama, children and supernatural creatures, after a while, my neighborhoods get boring because everyone is platinum and have more money than they need.

Sorry about all the negativism on this comment, I really love playing this game! It's just a bad phase hahaha. Oh, and if you have any tips on how to solve my little problem they would be very much appreciated!