Story Progression Woes

[RockinRobin]

In another post in the World Adventures board, I talked about how I had packaged up the Hawas family from Egypt and placed them in Riverview to play. So Geb Hawas, a teen at the time, has since grown up and I moved him into his own place right next door to his parents. It's a small house, but plenty big enough for him, with a little room to grow should he get married. Well I just went to play him for awhile and found out that an entire family of 4 (2 adults, a toddler, and a kid) has moved in WITH him and their household funds are now ZERO!

This just irritates me! I just moved him into his own place last night and he had about $50,000 in the bank and he has a great job. Now this whole family has moved in with him and now he's broke and no longer has his bachelor pad to himself. 

I guess I'm going to have to move that other family out because I didn't want to play them. I wonder why in Story Progression, so many sims move in WITH each other? The family that moved in with him is actually a family that I created a couple of weeks ago, and they had their own house that was perfect for them. Geb's house doesn't even have a crib or kid's room.....so why would they move in with him?

[Metropolis Man]

Yuck. Between this and Mr. Egyptian gigolo and some other story progression oddities it sounds like EA still has some serious refining to do.

[Tealeaf]

I really like the idea of Story Progression.  I control a house, and the rest of the town goes about its business.  But this business of my custom sims (my sims!) being booted out and relocating to Boston or wherever it is they go when they leave so that I can no longer play them is a deal breaker for me.  If we could somehow lock various sims into their house, as well as lock other from moving in, I would consider playing Story Progression again.  Till such time, though the woe is worth the wow.

[RockinRobin]

I agree Tea and I've considered turning SP off, but I do like it that life goes on with other sims. I don't even mind if something new happens with one of the families I create.....(get married, have a baby, etc..)...because it's kinda fun to check in with a family you haven't played in awhile to see what they have been up to. But I really DON'T like when major life events such as moving away or having some large family move in with one of my single sims, happen when that's not how I wanted the game to go. I also don't like it when I've worked very hard to build up a bank account for one of my sims, only to find them sitting at ZERO the next time I go to play them.

[purenergy]

I have had several random things happen in my game too. I had a couple who I could never get the going steady prompt for, even though they had been dating for weeks. I went to play another sim and the dude kept getting other girlfriends! I finally decided to move them in together, you know, they are a modern couple. They lived together and had a child and I still couldn't get them to go steady! I figured there was a glitch, ok. I go to play another sim for 1 week. When I got back they were going steady. Yea! I'll take it. I even got the propose marriage prompt, but didn't use it. I wanted to do it in a special place, not the bathroom. But when I went to play another sim for less than a day (I just went to change his clothes, he had just aged up) they had gotten married and moved out of there palatial mansion by the waterfall and into this crappy house by the town! I freaked. Not only did I not get to plan a wedding, they didn't have enough money to move back in so I had to go into build mode and sell off a bunch of stuff and tear down their exercise room, just so they could move back in.  

I also had a teenage girlfriend of one of my kids move in and other random strangers have moved in my homes as well.

Now, I keep story line progression on, but turn it (and aging) off when I leave my main characters to play other sims. I figure its like playing the other characters in the same "time" as my main characters. I resume aging and story when I activate my main household again.

It would be nice if we could edit the story line progression somehow to turn off "move" and "get married" things like that.

[MegTrog]

I agree that the story progression needs heavy refining.  All that ever seems to happen in my town is people moving.  I've had a few marriages, and a few births (and lately we're getting lots of deaths from old age) but otherwise, it's all moving.  I haven't kept track of who's moving where, but it seems from this thread, that the moving isn't even logical.  I could understand if a family of five moved from a two bedroom house to a four bedroom house, but moving to a smaller location just seems stupid!  And I'd rather see the same families stick around rather than a steady stream of families moving away and new ones moving in!

But mostly I'd like to see more marriages and babies.  I created a bunch of families for my town that I never intended to play--I just wanted to watch them grow.  But my married couples never had babies and my single Sims didn't get married, not even the hopeless romantic and flirty ones.  One flirty Sim married, but she and her husband never had kids!  And my workaholic/ambitious Sims didn't work up their career ladder, which I also thought would have been a nice touch.  Essentially, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of motivation in non-active households.... except, of course, to move!

That said, I've got one household of seven adults which never changed, despite the house being far too small for them.

[RockinRobin]

I did the same thing Meg.....created several families and moved them in to various houses around town just so I'd see MY sims playing in the game too. I also created an affordable 2 bedroom, one bath house that cost just $17,000 fully furnished and placed several of them (in different colors) around my neighborhood for the small families that didn't have much money. I've had a few random sims moving into those houses, but I don't understand the moving thing.

If the game generates sims and moves them into the game.....does it not matter how much money they have? Can they move into expensive homes? Also, does the game not take into account WHO is in the family? For example.....a family with a baby moving into a house that doesn't have a crib. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which sims move where.

[Sarah]

In my game (so far, I may be about to jinx myself) I've only had one family move out; the rest of the story progression has focused on births and deaths, no marriages that I can recall. My game did go through a phase  of seemingly every child born was a boy; about a week they switched to only girls but now its a healthy mix. I do only play one family though, because I didn't like the idea of having to constantly switch between families to make sure everything was going fine. In TS1 and TS2 I often had multiple families on the go, but I've not properly tried it with TS3 yet. Mostly because by the time I'd raised a child to YA I didn't have the chance to move them out before my computer would break.
My computer has fabulous timing, I must say. The day after I'd submitted my university work for the very last time, it broke and I lost everything. Well, all of one hefty project, the rest was backed up.

[Saltypaws]

I have had a few things like that happen to me too, on the the good side though, I went back to the family that actually prompted the post "how many children have your sims had" and decided to check on some of the kids that had moved out, one had become an International Superspy, one the Surgeon, one was a Top Gun, out of 8 so far 4 had maxed out careers, others were unemployed and one Bed pan cleaner, all in all not too bad.  I find I have better luck in Riverview than in Sunset Valley, now that I think about.  Sunset Valley is all messed up, no one is where they are supposed to be in that one either.  I don't know about anyone else, but there are alot of new faces and names lately, which is fine with me, I just noticed that the other day when I went to town.

[RockinRobin]

You just never know what you'll find each time you play the game! I opened the game yesterday and decided to create a nice looking male sim to move into Sunset Valley for a female sim I had, so she could meet him. Rather than building him his own house, I decided to just move him in with an existing family for awhile until he could build up his funds a bit. I moved him into the Claire Ursine home and when I went to that house to play, I was surprised to find that Claire had just given birth to Jared Frio's child. She was standing on the front porch and had put the baby down on the ground there. When I went and looked around in the house, I noticed there was NO baby stuff at all! She didn't even have a crib! I guess that's why she didn't want to take the baby in, since she had nowhere to put it. I checked her relationship panel and found that she and Jared strongly disliked each other, so I guess they must have broken up before the baby was born.

Anyway, I bought her a crib and a few toys and then got my sim to move out pretty quickly. I didn't want him involved in all that drama! LOL

I still don't understand how the game works.....how a sim can have a baby and live in a house without a crib. If I hadn't played the Ursine house, would she have moved to a different house that did have a crib? Also, I still don't understand where the money comes into play with the game created sims. Most of them have zero household funds, so how are they able to buy a house in the first place and then move around so much?

[AriaGirl77]

I still don't understand how the game works.....how a sim can have a baby and live in a house without a crib. If I hadn't played the Ursine house, would she have moved to a different house that did have a crib? Also, I still don't understand where the money comes into play with the game created sims. Most of them have zero household funds, so how are they able to buy a house in the first place and then move around so much?

Sim babies seem to do ok without cribs in non-active households.  But I can't stand to watch those poor sleep deprived babies laying on the floor crying!  I never go into edit neighborhood mode, unless it's to add new houses to vacant lots or something.  I just try not to watch or pay much attention to those poor babies and toddlers who have no place to sleep.  Though it seems like they grow up just fine without them.

[MegTrog]

I find I have better luck in Riverview than in Sunset Valley, now that I think about. 

That's interesting!  I wonder if it applies for everybody.  I play Sunset Valley, and as I said earlier, the thing that happens the most is people moving.  I've only had a few marriages and babies, and nobody ever seems to make serious progression in their career.

[TGBlank]

I couldn't stand the senseless random movings, mass immigration for no apparent reason and mass school dropouts, really noticeable when one plays a neighborhood for a long time. So i ended up switching to mods to control that.

[Sunshine]

My Sim family is in Sunset Valley so I hope what Saltypaws said doesn't apply to everyone! It seems to me every game is different. Like on my game Jared Frio is an old man and I am pretty sure he never had any children.  

[Pam]

I don't like the thing about babies not having a crib, either.  But as far as the game goes, the townies or Sims you aren't playing don't need to have cribs in order to have children.  If you never visited their houses, you'd never know.  I had a game once where my Sim went to the Ursine house in distress after his wife died.  It was Claire's adult daughter and her newborn baby living there!  The baby was laying on the floor and it just broke my heart.  So, I had my Sim marry Claire's daughter and move into her house.  I bought a baby bed and nursery stuff.  He raised that baby and then they had a couple of kids of their own.  This was when I first got the game, so I wasn't very experienced with things.