A Discussion on Story Progression

[Trip]

I'm not going to force people to read my stories to learn about my usual playing habits, but here they are: I usually play our dynasty challenges, and whenever the rules allow me to, I take a lot of progression into my own hands because the game won't do enough for me. This usually consists of moving in sims, pairing them up, and making loads of out-of-house babies. I do this to a point where I'm famous for it.

And that's relevant, I promise.

Anyways, I noticed something while reading other people's dynasties: they get something resembling progression in their games. There's a lot of buzz and crying (mostly by me) over the game's vanilla story progression not making babies, but I try to read whatever I can and a decent amount of players have some other progression to report. Their second generation's cousin got married! Generation five's half-sister moved in with her steady partner! And other hypothetical situations like that.

But me? None, at least in some of my games. Then I noticed a trend.

Inactive households progress in my game more when I do less. And this is actually supported by the game's code, which puts a cap on events that happen in town. But my theory is that it takes all events into the equation.

I'm going to present a few real scenarios I encountered to start.

1. I first attempted a Life States Dynasty back in late 2012. The rules prevented me from doing my usual antics (this was before I developed them much at all anyways), so I did not make any events happen. For a while, it was just my founder and her husband and the kids who didn't really do much. I kept tabs on the town and plenty of sims got married, or divorced. Relationships ran rampant. Households merged and split up. Aside from no one reproducing, it was a booming town.

2. I attempted the Immortal Dynasty plenty of times in 2012 and into 2013. This gave me plenty of time to perfect the art of populating the town within the ruleset for that challenge. That meant that I got better at doing more to progress the town on my own. As a result, the amount of events happening in my town dwindled with each attempt. I went from my first attempt, where I saw plenty of sims in new steady relationships and even a marriage or two, to my penultimate one where close to nothing happened. I also noticed a large drop-off in how many sims would get turned into occults.

3. I finished a life states dynasty attempt and left a lot on autopilot. When it came to checking up on the extended family and friends, people got into steady relationships. Plenty of townies turned into occults as the game went on.

4. I finished an immortal dynasty, and things got complicated:

• My first five generations were spent progressing the town by hand and producing babies that would eventually become future spouses. To say that nothing happened without my input is, in fact, accurate. Between extended family and friendships, I noticed that NO ONE EVER got into a steady relationship with anyone. Only four original townies turned into occult beings. But I generally ended up with a dozen or more babies each generation, plus a bunch of relationships I set up.
• I retired my official townie breeding program after generation five/when his promiscuous stepdad died, though I still had my male immortals and two jaded ex-spouses father children outside of the household. My production levels dropped off. Meanwhile, the town saw its first townie-turned-occult in 30 weeks, and one of the extended family members got herself a girlfriend without my help.

5. At the moment, I'm playing a 4x4 dynasty and going absolutely nuts with marrying sims and making babies. I've noticed the same lack of outside progression as I did with my immortal dynasty.

In contrast, the dynasties I've read that have some sort of progression in their towns have a more hands-off approach to their inactive sims.

My anecdotes aside, I want to have a discussion on this. What trends with story progression have you noticed? What seems to affect it for you? And am I alone?

This thread is not for pestering me for advice on breeding townies or complaining about the game not doing that, though.

[Lisa46]

I've never gotten sims outside the home having kids. I've had plenty if steady relationships. In terms of marriages — make a wedding area at a resort to start it.

[KRae]

I've never done any self-made story progression and (outside the one time that SV became empty) there is always activity. I've not had any marriages, but families move to town, move to different houses, combine households and very often family members left behind in a decadynasty have friends and boy/girl friends move in. No babies are born, however. The only new children move to town with their families.

[Deklitch]

I had a very interesting experience once in Sunset Valley. All of the options for supernaturals were enabled. It was a brand new game. My sim married Agnes on the first day and they travelled overseas that day as well. Agnes was a normal sim. When my sim and Agnes returned (I think it was to and from China) no one in town changed to a non-normal lifestate. I ended up having to give it up as I wasn't able to get the lifestates needed for Generations 3+ or best friend requirements. Never experienced that before or since.

Dek

[Nettlejuice]

I'm one of the unlucky ones. I make sure spares that are moved out are either pregnant or have a partner in the hopes of getting married or having kids. The game usually moves in young adults related to each other, or old NPCs living together. Only once during one of my life state dynasties did a spare have twins after being moved out and they were age stuck at teen 

[Turoskel]

My immortal dynasty was a total bust as far as progression goes, more often than not I get new families move in, usually an unmarried couple with kids who marry the same day they move in according to the paper, I didn't even get that this time, I only got elders so by the time I reached gen 3 and all the original townies had gone I had a town just full of old people. So in that case I had to do something myself so I started a job in daycare which helped it move young families in.

The only notable thing that happened in that game was Susie Broke and Travis McDermott got married, the game hooked them up as teens moved her in with his family and married them, that was about the extent of progression there for the whole eight generations.

I didn't have supernatural when I started that so no occults there, during my life states people moved around and hooked up with other sims, some with clones and some with original townies. The longer lifespans helped I feel, but it also interfered a lot, one of the things I hate is it killing off sims or emigrating them. Also I let a witch loose who was casting love charms all over the shop so she probably progressed it more than the game

In my 4x4 I only messed about adding a few occults and not in every town, only if it was a sim I wanted to keep around who hadn't been changed already. It felt busier, I think that may be the shorter lifespan making it run scenarios quicker, but people were moving about a lot more, and getting in relationships, I noticed quite a few engagements between sims although not really any marriages that I can remember, sims seemed to get jobs instead of all being unemployed for life and not because my sim worked there, Kristin Helgason in Aurora Skies is a good example of that as she started as a toddler but worked in business when she grew up and none of my sims worked there.

I personally find it extremely hit and miss, one of my failed immortal dynasty attempts was doing great as far as progression goes, then in the one I actually managed to finish it was pretty non existent. To me it seems the more they added with each EP the more story progression has to do and the less chance of it working as it originally did, the code for babies still is there but the odds are so low compared to it deciding to add a pet, give a degree, make somebody a nerd or a mermaid, it's just not going to happen anymore 

As an example of what I mean for my Immortal Dynasty I had every EP out at the time, some got added as I went along so by the end the only one missing was ITF and progression was bad.

Life States I took out Pets, Showtime, Seasons and Uni and progression was not too bad.

4x4 I took out Pets, Showtime, Uni, IP and ITF and progression was very busy.

I feel it works better with less expansions myself, but it still wont give me babies even if it's base game only 

[Lisa46]

Nettlejuice, you know that having a spare get pregnant in a life states before moving them out is illegal. Getting another sim pregnant is fine, was that what you meant?

[Nettlejuice]

@Lisa46 I know  The spare was moved out, when I checked on the family tree a few gens later story progression had given her a boyfriend and two kids. It was also a fun playthrough not posted here.

[Trip]

That's odd because most reports of story progression not producing kids came well before the Life States Dynasty was even an idea. Most evidence seemed to point it to a Pets patch.

Not trying to accuse you of cheating with your dynasty. Just pointing out things.

@Turoskel: Interesting about EPs affecting it. I tend to play with everything I have (all EPs but ITF, and some stuff packs too).

[Nettlejuice]

I understand, Trip, it wasn't during an official dynasty so no worries there. What I wanted to say was my own Sims that get moved out in normal and dynasty plays didn't have kids, the game would move in new families though, and I'd join the daycare career for when I wanted new households added if possible, so when I saw my Sim with a boyfriend and kids that was what surprised me. Not sure if that makes sense or not.

[KRae]

When I want new families, I buy the consignment shop and add registers. Sometimes 3 sims from the same family will be working there. I, of course, am hoping for 3 different families.

[dontmindme]

I've found that if I leave sims alone, ie just call them on the phone to keep the relationship up, the game has a stronger tendency of 'forgetting' these sims, for lack of a better term. Sometimes they'll last a lot longer than they should. For example, in my LS Dynasty, Carmella Hai survived for ~23 weeks without dying. She was in the founding spouse's relationship bar but beyond that, they rarely saw each other in game. Brittany Bergier seemed to suffer this as well, though in a different way. She is supposed to be a homeless child when the game starts, yet she didn't 'pop' up until Gen 4. She might be aging normally now, I can't tell (too many aging bugs have now infected the game).

With my ID, adding expansions as I got them, most of the kids outside the household are toddlers the day after they're born and then age normally. A couple jump the queue (thank you, father of Gen 8 ) and age really quickly until they're adults. There have been a lot of relationship upgrades in the game that I've noticed and there might be more if I bothered to look around.

[Lisa46]

Brittany Bertiger didn't show up in my game until 5th generation, actually.

[Trip]

Homeless kids are odd. They seem to often stay in stasis until one of your own kids meets them. It's a different issue but kind of interesting.

Some of Moonlight Falls original homeless have stayed alive for a while in my game too. It's hard to translate for how many weeks because I'm on the medium lifespan, but I'm pretty far into the game and original homeless townies Jin Anjali and Jack Skipper are still alive. They were my founders' bosses, for crying out loud!

[Deklitch]

Interesting in a Sunset Valley Game.

I had decided that I was going to put my sim in the law enforcement career, ask the Keaton family to move in and have my sim marry Agnes.

My sim's partner was Justine Keaton. I then moved the Keaton family in. After they moved in, Justine and my founder remained partners in the law enforcement career. On sending Marty Keaton to work, story progression made Agnes Crumplebottom one of his work colleagues (at level 1). I still married Agnes and had her resign from work. She had a lot of writing and painting to do, after all. The Keaton boy was born on about day 2 or 3, and my founder and Agnes's daughter was born 3 days after him. Not too big of an age gap, I suppose. Now in that game, they are both in secondary school, Agnes is an elder, and I'm playing with less than a full household! Also, none of my sims are a celebrity, and my founder sim did the logic supermax. All of his opponents were original townies in chess. For once I managed to reach level 5 and complete the chess skill challenge.

Dek