Play Style: Do You Play Close Up or At a Distance? Do You Pause Often?

[samoht04]

Well up close is sooo funny sometimes, you get to see these expressions! 



Flattering picture? 

[Slingsby]

I'm definitely a "Half-Walls", normal speed, panned back to "monitor everyone" person.  A bit of a control freak, so I don't appreciate Sims going off and doing stupid or un-necessary things on their own!  I like to keep them busy doing skills, and earning money 

I do a lot of "Pause and Queue" ... in fact, so much that the "P" key on my keyboard doesn't last a full year before I need a replacement!!

[John Allen]

Distance:  Change it up a lot depending on what's going on and zoom in and out as necessary.  When interacting with other sims -close. Alone- zoom to the house/lot.  So it just depends.

Pausing- the more sims i have in the household the more I pause. During activities, getting ready for work, evening things like cooking etc I don't pause. When meeting new sims I tend to pause just before the queue runs out.  Had an experience where my Sim was romancing a female sim and he had it to ... thinks xxxx is very alluring and then he starts talking about gardening.  Very smooth... since then I pause more when interacting.

[Joria]

 Had an experience where my Sim was romancing a female sim and he had it to ... thinks xxxx is very alluring and then he starts talking about gardening.  Very smooth... since then I pause more when interacting.

Too funny.  I had a similar experience.  In RL that would be a big, (makes loser sign on forhead), sayonara bubba.

I think I play according to what's going on.  In a challenge I usually need a bit more control so I pause, queue up, zoom out a wee bit and hit ultra speed with my finger hovering over the pause button.  In more relaxed play I go back and forth because I want those kodak moments.  I used to use mostly ultra speed but have found normal speed has it's benefits.  In the current challenge I'm in ultra speed seems to be the ticket.

I used to pretty much be a builder/remodeler and seldom actually played my Simmies but while this is still my favorite mode of play, (I love totally renovating a town and making it more my own), I am finding more and more that actually playing the characters is just as much fun.  They do such outrageous things!

[Happytime]

I've only played one challenge of yet (I'm thinking about going back through the "Dead / Completed" ones and trying a few), but the only difference I could note in my play style was I was a great deal more "controlling" (ensuring each and every Sim has something to do, *snap snap!*), and actions for each Sim were queued up such that my Sims very seldom had a chance to "Free Will" something I'd not directed.

But since the one challenge I've done (Grimmy's Skill Challenge of Total Unhappiness) had makeneedsstatic active (the few times I failed to queue up events, when I selected a Sim they were blissfully and mindlessly just standing about, all needs met), I'm not sure if my experience much matters! hehe

  -- Happytime

[Storyteller]

I tend to play with half-walls or walls down.  I also love the "ultra-speed through task" button, otherwise I play on normal speed.  I also have a tendency to follow one Sim at a time, focusing on that Sim accomplishing whatever while the others do what they want to do.  Somehow, I always seem to end up with seven or eight Sims in the house (half of them children), ignoring everyone except the person I have trying to raise skill points or complete an opportunity.

I also like to use map view, especially when I have Sims running to several different places (think money collection or finding collectables), and I spend half my time in map mode when overseas. 

[Glic2000]

Here's a tip for people who like to pause the game often:  the ` (tilde) key on the keyboard also serves as a pause button.  I find that very convenient because it's next to the 1234 keys that control the speed.    I discovered that by accident and I'm guessing I'm not the only one who didn't know about it. 

I don't usually pause the game often, but sometimes I pause while waiting for the camera to pan to a location very far away (if timing is critical it can use up a lot of valuable seconds!).

When I attempted my first Sims story blog, I noticed that my photos seemed to be zoomed out much farther than other bloggers'.  So now I zoom the view in more if I need to take screenshots for a story.  Otherwise I keep it at a sort of medium distance.  I think I'm a bit of a camera control freak, though.  I've noticed that if I play the game too long, my wrist starts to hurt because I'm constantly holding down the middle mouse camera so I can spin the camera around for the best view.

One thing I do find fascinating:  if I take a lot of screenshots while playing, and then go back and look at them later, I notice the screenshots are full of all kinds of subtle details (especially in the faces) that I totally missed while playing the game.  It's kind of like watching the same movie  again and noticing new things the second time. 

[Aiwe]

According to my son I spend more time with the game paused than I do with it running and I need to learn that the faster speeds exist... he's probably right, but I'm an incredible control freak when it comes to my Sims, and sometimes I just have to give them full lives, really, really full lives, for example the mother of the family I'm currently playing (soon to be grandmother) is part up way up her fourth career having maxed three already and she's still got about a week to go until she hits elder, on the other hand her husband got his super spy life time wish ages ago and has been just messing about learning the guitar or smashing space rocks, he's way behind on writing reports but I'm just thinking, never mind you've got a week to go until retirement (I caked him up at her birthday party so they are the same age), just let the reports go hang, go learn enough fishing so your daughter can become an immortal.

I play zoomed in to about one room at a time most of the time and switch between Sims a lot to see if they're doing what I told them or have run off to play in the street, sometimes if they're doing something particularly sweet or cool I just let them get on with it and rein them in later, for example in a legacy like game (basically a legacy with some of the rules adapted to my tastes) I was playing a while back I had a couple of cousins who'd completed their life time wishes early in life and had basically been reduced to being child minders and every single time I left them without actions cued up they would seek each other out and start chatting and sharing secrets in some random corner, it was both adorable and slightly creepy.

I'm not much of a builder, I just don't consider myself good at making nice houses, although every now and then I make one I really like and then many many families will get to live in versions of it. I'm going to try and make an ice house though with the soon to be immortal sculptress, not sure how that's going to go, I guess I'll have to see.

[Sophie4563]

Here's a tip for people who like to pause the game often:  the ` (tilde) key on the keyboard also serves as a pause button.  I find that very convenient because it's next to the 1234 keys that control the speed.    I discovered that by accident and I'm guessing I'm not the only one who didn't know about it. 

Another keyboard shortcut for pausing is the 0 key. It's easily reached if you use the number pad.

I tend to micromanage my sims. Lots of pausing and flipping back and forth between individual sims. It gets pretty hard when they're spread all over town.

[malteser60]

Here's a tip for people who like to pause the game often:  the ` (tilde) key on the keyboard also serves as a pause button.  I find that very convenient because it's next to the 1234 keys that control the speed.    I discovered that by accident and I'm guessing I'm not the only one who didn't know about it. 

I didn't manage to get that to work. I normally use the 0 button to pause.

I tend to find myself playing from far away to be able to see what's happening but I need to keep reminding myself to zoom in otherwise I miss classic facial expressions such as this one below. It's one of my founding sims on her way to smash space rocks. She grumbled all the way there:



Another one of her and her husband just after woohoo - she doesn't look so happy!


Running to a dive well after being set on fire:

And subsequent belly flop!


And my favourite when being ejected out of a sarcophogaus

[Saltypaws]

I didn't realize for a long time about facial expressions.  I just played along and one day, I forget what I was doing and I zoomed in and about fell off my chair.  The expression was priceless and then started reading on here about other people pausing.  I do that alot more now and it is so much fun.  I have quite a few screen shots of pretty good expressions.  So now, needless to say, I play fairly close to watch them more closely.

[Happytime]

Diane, I'm of a mixed mind "zoomed-up close" for the Sims3.

I enjoy seeing the Sim's expressions, for true; but I just don't find the Sims3 as visually-appealing as the Sim2 Sims were to my eye (that's a diplomatic way of saying I think they look bloated / puffy and generally *bleh*).

I also have a great deal of difficulty maneuvering the camera about in this version (which may be my strange mouse ... come to think of it, I think I'll hook up an old-fashioned Microsoft Mouse and see if the camera controls behave any better for me), I used to be able to really get excellent views in the Sims2 versus what I can manage in the Sims3.

Regardless, sometimes it's hilarious to zoom-in when the Sims are being really expressive and checking out their shenanigans!

  -- Happytime

[Esther1981]

This close up is awesome and funny in my opinion!


This is my sim fighting Cornelia. I wish I could have gotten closer, but no matter how many times I would roll my wheel, this is the closest I could get to them! It's still cool though!

[LlamaMama]

I see the stripe! Tell me the green skin isn't another graphics glitch.

[NeoFelis]

This is my sim fighting Cornelia. I wish I could have gotten closer, but no matter how many times I would roll my wheel, this is the closest I could get to them! It's still cool though!

Sometimes if I move my mouse closer to the scene, then zoom, I get better results. Have you tried that?