What Lifespan Do You Like to Play?

[Eldridge]

I usually playing a normal lifespan, because I am quickly bored when I set at long lifespan. Exceptional case is when it has something to do with story-making, usually I end up to Long or Epic or turning the age enable tp off.

[scribbledsoul]

Up until just recently, I have bounced back and forth between Long and Epic. I have tried Normal a few times, but it just seems so short, and I find that my sims are constantly skilling and working trying to stay ahead. They just don't get any time to relax on Normal! And I love the relaxed pace of Epic but it is so long when playing a multi-generational game, and I don't like using the cake to age my sims up early. I enjoy doing the little things in the game, like several others here. I want my sims to have a relaxed life and be able to enjoy the fruit of their labors.

One setting that I am experimenting with, which seems to be working well for me, is a custom setting with the sliders maxed in the Long lifespan (384 days total). It's a nice middle ground, allowing me to both relax and see a few generations go by. I have lots of time to play, being a stay-at-home mom and housewife, so there's no hurry for me. I do enjoy setting up a realistic lifespan sometimes based on real-world aging (1 sim day equaling three human months, to match the pregnancy scale, which works out to 312 sim days, or 78 human years), but I also like to keep the game balance. I wonder how far I can get in an alphabet legacy on my settings?

~ Scribbles

[Annm16]

I usually play normal but I've shortened the toddler stage and lengthened the young adult stage since those are my least/most favourite ages at the moment.

[chaosmaster j]

I've always played with aging off because after modifying every aspect of them in CAS and working hard to level their skills, it feels depressing for them to just die.

[Turoskel]

In the past I have played on epic but for the last year I've used a custom long setting, usually I put babies down to 2 days toddlers to 5 and leave kids and teens on default and lengthen the rest, but it's not very often that my original sim gets near elder before I get bored and start over.

As a rule my sims never get old and never die, so when I started a townie dynasty it was a whole new experience, the shorter lifespan and actually letting them go, now I'm trying the immortal one and I still find it hard letting them die, plus 7 generations of my founder sim being an old lady, and then all her descendants too, very different style of play for me but I'm actually enjoying it more than I thought I would. I still doubt I'd play like this outside of a challenge though, I like my sims forever young it makes me too sad when they die

[Korva]

I have the lifespan set to 3/5/14/14/40/40/28 for a total of 144 days, which mostly works for me. If my household has babies or toddlers, they usually get aged up
because these stages just annoy me to no end. Children and teens often get aged up as well, I just can't stand it when a Sim spends so much time trapped in a rabbit hole.

Cats have a lifespan of 54 days, dogs 47 and horses 64. If I ever do a horse-focused household, though, I'll have to extend that because mares need more time to build both a strong performance career and still be able to have a few foals.

[Caterina]

Yay for weirdness, normal is over-rated. :p Glad to know i'm not the only one that makes it so they can count how old their sim is. I have my seasons (all 4) set to 8 days each, so with their year being 4 days my sims seasons last 2 years each for them lol. I have my sims ages as follows
Infant - 4 days - newborn to 12 months
Toddlers - 16 days - 1-4
Children - 28 days - 5-12
Teens - 24 days - 12-17 (I can't get it on 24 but it's on 25 so I use the Mastercontroller mod to age them up one day, though otherwise i'd just age them up 1 day before their birthday. Since I have all their ages written down anyway to the day, crossing off the day once it's gone, I see their ages stagger sometimes but MC fixes the problem right up. I probably qualify for ocd on this...i'm ok with that lol. So in my legacy I really can say my sims exact ages)
Young Adult - 88 days - 18-39
Adult - 80 days - 40-59
Elder - 60 days - 60-74

I even have the pets planned out accordingly. I even looked up how long it takes horses to grow up to figure out how long to keep them foals as well as how old they get on average, same with cats and dogs lol. Horses have a total of 25 years, cats 15 years and dogs 12 years.

Edit: I also have the moon cycle set to 8 days, just like each season, so it also lasts 2 years for them.

I am weird too! I was playing my simself and I wanted to play out each year like it happened in real life.  So, with the toddlers, they learned to walk the first year, talk the second year, potty the third year, and read books the fourth year.  I also had my sim take ballet, swim, and learn to skate the same years I did.  It is hard to wait to teach your sim to drive.  I really liked playing this way.  I had bought the multi-tab.  It was so easy for my sim to max ALL of the skills before she was an adult.

[AkonIsAwesome]

I've always played on normal, except a few times when my sister changed it to aging off and I would start to wonder why my sims weren't getting older. I've always really liked normal, but I've never played much with other lifespans.

[simanda]

I'm so horribly slow at reaching my LTW that I tend to play on Long with slight modifications: Babies 3 days, Toddlers 7, and Elders 20.  Those are the three ages I hate playing most XD

[EllaTheTaco]

I play with aging off, and I age them whenever I want

At first I played with normal, then epic, then long, then short, then medium, then normal, and now I'm here

[londonlassie]

I like to customise my Sims' lifespan rather than playing with any of the presets, because I like some stages and not others. I always have Baby and Elder as the shortest life stages - baby is usually two days at most, and elder is almost never more than five. I normally have a long toddler stage because I quite like toddlers, the animations are super cute and I like to get as many skills maxed as high as possible with each life stage, so I always try to read all the toddler books, play with the blocks, play with the xylophone, yadda yadda yadda.
For teens, young adults and adults, I usually leave them at the default for either the normal or long lifespans.

I can't really play with the epic lifespan because I get bored too quickly - I rarely tend to change household, so if I get bored with one family, I end up quitting that game.

[Wai]

I use the normal lifespan.  But, I just hate to see my adult sims age and certainly not get old, so, I get the long life wish from the genie as quickly as possible.  Then I keep them young, while all around them age normally, by using ambrosia, occasionally, and a life fruit/flame fruit nectar mixture regularly.  They usually end up with a huge lifespan before I get bored and start again with a new family.

[Orange Iguana]

I normally turn aging off entirely. My reason being that I'm not a big fan of townies getting replaced, them almost never having kids or teens if I decide to add my own children to the household and give them friends, all that kind of stuff.

In the event that I play with aging on and I'm not doing a challenge, I'll play it on normal and feed sims young again potions until I can afford an age freeze potion. I also immediately cake up babies and cake up toddlers once they've learned the basics.

[BlondeCupcake]

I play normal, but I shorten the time that they are teens and elders. I wouold get bored if I played a sim more than say 80 days. 

[Kaemarie]

I originally started with aging off and played until I got bored trying to do everything under the sun. Now I play a normal life span and just keep my sim young with potions/ambrosia and watch the world move on without her. Beyond playing a dynasty it breaks my heart to see them die, so I try not to let them go.