I wonder if anyone else has started to experience this. That you start spending more time making CC than you do playing the game proper.

Lately, over the past few weeks I've found that I've been using CAW and building lots more often than I've been playing the game proper. I haven't even played the game proper over the past couple weeks, except once when I exported my unfinished world once to test routing.

I doubt it'll stay this way permanently, but that's something I've noticed. It seems to take forever when using CAW to make something. I might have to put off the lot building until later until I can flesh out the world some more. Even something as simple as placing guardrails along a road can take a long time, particularly when the road is sloped and you have to line up the objects just right.

Sure, I could just make a completely flat world, copy and paste in some lots, and make it functional. But it wouldn't look nice, it would be boring, and no one wants to play a world like that.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if a new EP is out by the time I think I'm nearly done. Then I'd have to factor in whatever new lot types that EP brings.

But I guess that's the price I pay if I want to make a reasonably nice looking world that includes every community lot type, and sometimes multiples of a particular type (i.e. parks, fishing spots).

I've never built anything in a Sims game. I've always been a player. My roommate is the one who spends 4 hours building one house

No, I play more than I create. Even thou sometimes, when I'm modifying a mod or fixing something I'll somehow decide that I can't play until thing X is done and then I end up spending what little time I have to play, on modding. But when it's done, and thing X is finished, the game feels 10x more fun when I finally get the chance to start it up.

There is nothing wrong in spending a lot of time on the world you are creating. You and who ever downloads it (if you decide to upload), will appreciate it more when you know you have done your best, and the world is not just another flat surface.

Thank you. I do intend to upload it, if I can ever finish it. I'm still a far ways off from that though. For instance there still aren't many trees. At once point there was, until it occurred to me that pine trees aren't native to the Midwest, so now I have to place Ash trees instead (I got that information from Wikipedia). I'm making something you might see in the Midwest, since that's what I'm most familiar with.

*Raises hand*
Yep, I do that a lot, too. Lately I'm more into creating new sims and experimenting with poses than creating new CC, though.
It's been a while since I had the occasion to play the game properly. More often than not I end up starting a new hood, play for a while and then think "hey, wouldn't it be cool to have this in game...?" and then close everything and start to create Same thing happens with TS2, too.

I find that the possibility to create and import your own stuff into the game is just about as funny as playing the game itself: I just love seeing my sims walking around with an item I made myself and experiment to learn how to make new stuff :lovestruc

I agree on the part that CAW takes forever. Tried building a world once, nothing more than modifying a little Sunset Valley, but it does take a really long time, especially if you want to make it look like real terrain. And then it creashes often, on my system at least. I don't know why they didn't give us empty neighbourhoods like in TS2, that we could modify in game as we please.

I go through phases so if I build a world I've probably spent a month building then a month playing and repeat the cycle over and over till it's ready. I personally need to play the world a lot to iron out glitches and often as I play I get the odd flash of inspiration for something else to build. I agree it takes ages and unfortunately my 'technique' means I have yet to upload a world! I do become pretty anal though and decide all the community lots have to be custom to match the environment and am never really happy with it. But I do have fun playing them. I'd say I build 70% play 30%.

I don't think I loaded my actual savegame even once this year. I have two test games in a dozen states each that I play to test stuff. So, yeah, I definitely spend more time creating (and testing) than playing just to play. I enjoy test-playing too, though, and usually when I'm done with a test game and household, I save that household to add it to my legacy game.

I've built a lot (like in "much", not like in "one") back when I played TS2 and I'd consider four hours pretty short. I was up to two hours and more per room in the end.

My gameplay has changed a lot. After I learned, how to handle CAW, I spend most of my time with creating worlds.
Then I learned to create facial stuff like beards or lipsticks.
The next step for me were the hair conversions from male to female.
It's faszinating for me, how my interests have changed.

Every 10 hours for the game are 3 hours of playing it and 7 hours of creating something.

I don't play the actual game as much as I used to. I recently downloaded CAW, so I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure that out. And I like CAP, so I often work on patterns. Also I usually have a house in the works. And I have played my Barnacle Bay game a bit lately, but even there I spend a lot of time dressing the sims.

I spent six months creating a world, but as soon as it was finished I got the itch to make another, so that's what I've been doing for the past seven months! I only seem to play when I'm testing.

I do that... my problem is I get too much stuff I want to do and push back other projects. So now I have a list of projects and I can't start a new one unless I finish or cancel the existing ones. And I have to play the game while working on projects (under the guise of testing,lol). That way I don't get burned out. Creating Venice world was very time consuming and I started to miss playing the game because I was so busy in CAW all the time. Now I want to update it for Late Night, but I have to finish two other projects first (well, one mod is awaiting approval and the second I need to finish).

In the Sims, it's very easy for your eyes to be bigger than your stomach. So many ideas, so little time.

I hate decorating houses much less building them, so 4 hours would be an eternity to me I'm just not a builder, I don't get any fun out of it. I guess that's why my main family in the game is on generation 13

Oh I know. Back when I started playing around with CAW, I foolishly believed that it would be kind of like Simcity 4. As if!

My first world I created in about a day, but it's so ugly. It only had one terrain paint, about 10-15 residential lots, one (and only one) of nearly every community lot, and very little decor. I didn't even use any fish or gem spawners, so I placed them all in the City Park. If that's not bad enough, every single lot was 64x64 and I just copy and pasted the standard EA-created buildings into each of the lots. I only built up the bare minimum of lots, and they were all frankly quite crappy and completely mismatched with one another. I'm surprised it didn't even have routing issues. Of course, there was virtually nothing to explore. I can almost guarantee it wouldn't pass muster for me to upload here, even if I wanted to upload it (I don't). It's the equivalent of splashing paint onto a canvas without any rhyme or reason, and trying to call it art.

Shortly after that, it became very clear to me that to make a world that both looked nice and was interesting, it would take a long time. But I'm pretty sure the results would be worth it.

Although I haven't played TS3 in quite a while, I've always created more than I played. Sims mostly. I could almost populate a neighborhood with all the Sims I have created. And because I don't end up playing the game, I've grown bored of it. I can never stick to one household and end up not playing.

I go through phases. Sometimes I'll feel really inspired so will spend most of my Sims time creating and barely play at all. Other times I just cba to create and so will just play. I'd say that overall I spend more time playing but I do spend a lot of time creating too.

I am a builder and get inspired by real life homes, commercial buildings, parks. I see a concept in my head and cannot play til I build it in the game. Once I get through a building spell, I have to try them out. That seems the only time I play the proper way.

Now I am learning patterns and getting comfortable with photo editing programs. Not a big deal for many here, but it's a big deal for me. Also learning about creating paintings, which is a passion for me. Between the creating new lots, testing new mods, creating other things, I hardly play anymore.

There's no real "proper" way to play the sims. It's meant to be played how you want. I often go through building stages and playing stages. I'll build a few houses and play a family some. But lately, I've only been using CAW on my old PC since it doesn't yet work on Macs. I'm working on a world...just a heads up to everyone. It's going to be fabulous! But yes, right now I am creating more than playing.

Oh I know. The word "proper" in the way I used it took on a different meaning. I meant it in the way you said "playing stage." I never implied that there's a right way to play or a wrong way. When I actually play, I tend to play a certain way. But there's nothing that says you have to play the way I do. The beautiful thing about TS3 is that it's not the least bit linear. It's a virtual dollhouse, with no "end," no way to beat it. A save game can become whatever you want it to become.

It's kind of like where I live, where if I say St. Louis, the city proper, I'm talking about places that are governed by the St. Louis city government. This is differentiated from St. Louis county, which is the name of the county surrounding the city on the Missouri side of the river, but includes many smaller towns. It's also differentiated from "St. Louis Metro," which includes not only the city proper, but all the counties that surround it.

I hope that made sense.

I'm with buzzler on this one. In the past I've taken over a week to complete a house (usually 2-4 hours a night if I'm on a sims bender, lol). That's if I'm creating for upload or for contests though. I go through phases of just wanting to create highly detailed lot after lot but then occassionally I feel the urge to play for real. Funnily enough when I play with no intention of showing my house to anyone the houses I build for my sims are very basic structures with plain decor that take less than an hour to slap together....my poor wee sims

I guess I'm like a plumber who never gets around to fixing his own leaky tap, lol. I wish I had the patience to get to the 3rd generation though, never mind the 13th like you!

I would say that the word "proper" destroys the main aspect of the game. The Sims is a game that fits lots of people because you can choose how you would like to play. Basically, there are three ways to play: Build, Design and Live, which attracts different people.

In the Sims 1 and 2, I barely played with a sim at all, and I didn't furnish my homes either. To me the build mode was the proper alternative.

Sims 2
Build: 90%
Design: 9%
Live: 1%

With TS3 the amount of Live time have increased a lot, simply because the building mode is a disaster.

Sims 3
Live: 60%
Build: 20%
Design: 20%

I don't understand what you mean? I built with both TS2 and TS3 but I'm definitely more experienced with TS3 since I was only starting to learn advanced techniques when I ditched TS2. What was so much better about TS2 building? (I don't mean that sarcastically like it might sound, I'm just wondering if there was a lot more to TS2 that I didn't know about/forgot with time).

Come to think of it, I think I probably built less with TS2 and played the game more than I do now that I've switched to TS3

Basically what Simsample said. I spend very little time playing the game.

I thought it was kind of obvious that when BenC0722 used the term "playing the game proper" he was talking about playing live mode, as in actually controlling sims. "Creating" then covers anything that isn't live mode, like building, decorating, making patterns, making sims, CAW, etc. Everyone who has played The Sims knows that it's a soapbox game and won't tell any other players that there is a right or wrong way to play it!

I certainly can relate to this... I spend most of my time creating worlds instead of playing the game. I keep thinking that "Oh I'll play in this world!" but then I get another idea and get excited about it and start creating that world This wasn't an issue with Sims 2 but Sims 3 just seems to be missing something... its quite disappointing :S