How to keep from getting bored

[Twinmum]

One thing that I used to do a lot of with TS2 was look for house plans on line, then try to Sim them. With the upcoming building contest approaching, I decided to try my hand at building again (I haven't done that much with TS3)
So I went looking at house plans and found this one.. it's actually one that I made in sim form for TS2. I really like the house, so I decided to redo it for TS3
These are the plans:
http://www.globalhouseplans.com/840-square-feet-1-bedroom-1-bathroom-Waterfront-home-plans-0-garage-%282478%29

and this is my finished house:




Norma

[Tiax]

Wow.

[wildredchild]

Norma, that is WOW.  Great job!

[Swede1992]

Amazing house Twinmum! You are good at making houses.

What I mostly do to keep myself interested in those little sims, is to always add new conflicts. Good drama always contains conflicts to keep everything from falling into the mundane monotony we are trying to escape from when we play the game!

Examples: Don't have time to clean up those irritating newspapers? Don't cancel the delivery; hire a maid! Marry the maid, acquire a little money ( ) and drop her into the dungeon, the trap door of which disappears whenever anyone is inside! (actually what I'm kinda doing right now) Go back to the boring normal life and watch how your lawn is once more covered in rotting newspapers, but now with a sense of accomplishment! (or close to it )

Tired of your old job as an inventor? Go into ghost hunting, but with a klepto! Ghosts can bring in the big money quickly, but it's also a perfect opportunity to get into people's houses, and more importantly, their cars! Watch how the neighbourhood gets hit by its own recession and how everybody can glance at your new sport car from their boring, monotonous cab cars!

[TheCub]

Something that applies to me in a lot of games is that I love to play the beginning of a "challenge". For most games, that's just the beginning of the game, but for Sims, it's the legacy challenge. I think I now have 4 or 5 legacies, and the furthest I've gone on one is a child sim in the third generation.

That's about as far as I usually get before I get bored. In the past, story progression has always messed up my neighborhood by the third generation. Too many elders, not enough children, everyone in town has lousy traits, etc.

My current apocalypse challenge is the longest I've ever lasted in any game. This is the first time I've ever had the second generation reach elder or the third generation reach young adult. I'm glad to see that EA story progression has greatly improved since the game was first released, although I still prefer to use a story progression mod.

One thing that keeps the game from getting boring is to do things you've never done before. One of my apocalypse sims is currently in the criminal career working toward Emperor of Evil, and I also have a teen preparing to become a Rock Star. I've never played either of those careers before, so that should be more interesting than doing military or science again as I do so often.

[Naga]

What keeps me from getting bored is that I have only one family in the game. "Wait, is that your 'how NOT to get bored??' "

I keep him as my "everything done" guy. All skills maxed, all skill challenges done, all relic collections stored in his little chest, having at least 6 kids in each map (Sunset valley and each travel location) ("Are you NUTS?") ("Yes I am"), and pretty much everything else you could think of... or almost.

When I get bored of him, there's either a new expansion to complete or I just make a new stupid family. Maybe I will make one in Twinbrook... Probably not.

By the way, I always keep aging off and story progression on, until a good amount of people have new kids (to keep the town balanced), and then turn it back on and go have some Ambrosias. His needs are always static because I believe they are a waste of time after the first 2 months of playtime and proving yourself as capable of taking care of a Sim.

[jmz95]

One thing that keeps the game from getting boring is to do things you've never done before. One of my apocalypse sims is currently in the criminal career working toward Emperor of Evil, and I also have a teen preparing to become a Rock Star. I've never played either of those careers before, so that should be more interesting than doing military or science again as I do so often.

That's what I love about legacy challenges, only being able to do random traits. That way, I just go with whatever personality my sim develops. Also, I think I should go back to my apocalypse challenge sometime. I hope that the writer for the Sims 3 version of the rules starts blogging about her go with the challenge; I follow her Sims 3 stories regularly.

[Joria]

Something that applies to me in a lot of games is that I love to play the beginning of a "challenge". For most games, that's just the beginning of the game, but for Sims, it's the legacy challenge. I think I now have 4 or 5 legacies, and the furthest I've gone on one is a child sim in the third generation.

You must be my Sim twin!  I do the exact same thing.  Let's face it, by the time you are at gen 3 you've got the house, and yeah, it could stand a bit of fixing up but basically it's done, you've got the cash, and now it's going to be more of the same thing.  I've gotten several up to gen 3 but the real challenge, the starting off flat broke and how you can do things better, is pretty much done.  I keep telling myself THIS time I'll make it to gen 4. lol  Found Crazy 8 challenge so my gen 3 just sits at gen 3 waiting for my return.

[Pam]

I've gotten all the way to generation 13. 

[jmz95]

Pam, what did you do to keep the game interesting? It seems to me that by the time you're at the 5th generation, you've got enough money to build the mansion and pay the bills, and if you save some of the kids stuff, then you never have to buy another crib or training potty.

[Pam]

I played my Legacy when the game was still very new, so all of the random traits, LTWs, etc. were exciting just by themselves.  I was just determined to play until the 10th generation, no matter what.  I built the family cemetary across the street and grouped the graves by generation and it got interesting to see how full it was getting.  I used a specific theme for names for each generation.  I had an enormous garden, complete with a grove of money trees that were breath taking.  I bought the entire town one property at a time.  I remodeled and expanded the house a few times.  This was all before World Adventures came out, too.  Then, once I had bought in the 10th generation (she was named after the founder), I was released from all the restrictions of the legacy challenge.  I concocted a plan to resurrect the founder and let her meet her namesake.  That was a lot of fun because it was a group effort with all of the 9th generation.  It was only after the founder came back and a couple more generations were born that I started to get bored and that was around the time the Forum got started, so I had plenty of other things to do.

[Saltypaws]

I was trying to find a thread similar to what I am typing and this one seems to fit more than the others. It is an old thread, but I didn't want to start another one if there is already one I can use. 

 I have found now, that I can't seem to stay in one family very long.  I guess, maybe it is boredom, not sure.  Like in Hidden Springs, I start a game in one household and now I have gone to almost all of the other households and it seems it is an obsession to keep switching active households.  I am not quite sure why I have started this, but for me, it is not unusual to have 6 to 10 families in one neighborhood that I play.  I use to hate to switch, but not now.  Does anyone else play alot of families in one neighborhood?  I know Pam and a couple of others, go to some lots with babies and add cribs and toys, I use to do that, now I stay and play and have to keep going back to see how everyone is doing, lol.  Maybe I have played too much sims, my sister thinks I am nuts to have that many families at one time.

[RunAmokSims]

I was trying to find a thread similar to what I am typing and this one seems to fit more than the others. It is an old thread, but I didn't want to start another one if there is already one I can use. 

 I have found now, that I can't seem to stay in one family very long.  I guess, maybe it is boredom, not sure.  Like in Hidden Springs, I start a game in one household and now I have gone to almost all of the other households and it seems it is an obsession to keep switching active households.  I am not quite sure why I have started this, but for me, it is not unusual to have 6 to 10 families in one neighborhood that I play.  I use to hate to switch, but not now.  Does anyone else play alot of families in one neighborhood?  I know Pam and a couple of others, go to some lots with babies and add cribs and toys, I use to do that, now I stay and play and have to keep going back to see how everyone is doing, lol.  Maybe I have played too much sims, my sister thinks I am nuts to have that many families at one time.

I've done that from time to time but right at the moment I'm just building.  I haven't actually played a Sim in a couple of weeks. I generally get bored right before a new EP comes out but I got bored earlier this time. I think it's because Generations didn't really add a lot of new things. It increased social interactions but it didn't add the kind of new things as other EPs.  In WA there was travel, tombs and new build items, in Ambitions there were all the new careers to explore and in LN there was the big city, vamps, celebs  and new ways to build. Generations didn't have any of this.  Even now with Hidden Springs I've explored it but really nothing new.

So I'm just building and waiting for Pets.

[imaGleek]

Recently I've been doing a lot of what Salty said. I usally get bored after a while and change households, and in a recent game of mine I think I've played ever household.

To keep myself from getting bored I just do a varity of thing, from trying to create a vampire-simbot hybrid, building contests, and an immortal dynasty.

[MoMoll]

I switch households too. Usually I was playing the Romantic angle a lot and always had the sim be nice and friendly to everyone. I just started a new game; where she is buying up property and then she'll fire a bunch of people (Lola Belle is first on my list). I want to see if this affects how many times she gets "Falsely Accused".