Hey, all! I just got back into creating Sims in Body Shop after a long hiatus, and I've noticed that I get stuck on making Elder Sims. There's a thread for pictures of Elder Sims somewhere on this site, but I thought a lot of the Sims in the pictures looked really young. What's the point of having Elder Sims if they look like they're in their thirties?

I'm interested in how you all take that white hair, slumped posture, and sagging facial structure and change it into a mark of character!

For example, the one Elder I've ever liked was one I made a long time ago. As ruled by the roll of the die, he was a bit of a grump and a loner, had the family aspiration and no family, and was gay.

I gave him a beard--not a huge one, but it covered his face--and a fedora, though I decided that he was spry enough that he didn't need glasses. I had a lot of fun picking out the outfits to suit his personality--something dapper, but nothing too silly or showy. (It was hard to resist those kilts as formal-wear.)

And so I grew attached to him by the time he died. He'd married one of the Townies and they'd adopted a little girl. Their relationships were touching to me, and so I was actually sad to see him go--because I knew the family he'd wanted his whole life would miss him, too.

So what do you do to make your Elders stand out as characters? What Elder Sims have been your favorites to play, and why?

Well, I've mentioned my elder sims a number of times so I won't repeat myself except to say that elder sims are generally awesome. They're off the earning-money-raising-a-family treadmill and can do what the hell they like. And they like a lot of stuff.

If an elder is not married or their spouse has died, I have them go out to a club and pick out a new spouse.
I don't make all that many elders, and I'm not sure if I'm actually going to use my Elder's Village once I have some. I think I'll just let them live and die. Maybe move them to a retirement home and play them occasionally so they don't crowd up the household.

I like to move my elders into a fully furnished house with other elders, turn the time to a maximum, and let them do what they want. They actually take care of themselves fine, and they almost always die of old age. I usually make easels the only source of fun, and then I go to buy mode and delete finished paintings. Once two of my elder who had dead spouses because best friends and fell in love.

Depends on the Elder Sim in question. Some of my Elders, once they give up their jobs, stay home to help care for the grandkids. Others continue working, building up the family wealth until turning the family Estate over to their heirs, and then spend their remaining "years" living in peace and quiet. Others just try to find happiness. I also have one Romance Sim who is an Elder and still churning out illegitimate children with the women he toys with.

Some actually do more than one thing. I had Nik and Bleeka Remot give the family cottage to their oldest son, Torio and then moved them to a beachside lot in another, quieter part of town. They continued to work for quite some time. Then when their younger son, Dorwan got out of Uni, they allowed him and his fiancée, Marsha Bruenig, move into their beachside cottage. The beachside cottage was eventually demolished and turned into a much grander estate than the tiny farmhouse the family had started out in. They continued to work, while Dorwan and Marsha began to realize their dream of running a small market just down the street from their home, and of course began to raise a family. Sadly, Bleeka was the first to pass, and that was just after their third grandchild (the first from Dorwan and Marsha) was born. I had toyed with allowing Nik to find love again, but it did not last. If I recall correctly, hr lived long enough to see his fourth grandchild born, though possibly he may have lived to see the fifth born as well. My memory is poor.

And then there was Skot Berk, who I had originally intended to be a loner, cranky old man, but who wound up meeting the long-time divorcee Colya Siepans who had become a loner as well, since both her sons were at University. Friendship, and later, romance bloomed between them, and Colya was happy for a time, until Skot passed away after returning from a vacation they took. Now she is a widow and I am considering having Colya move in with her eldest son, to help him and his wife, with their new baby, as well as with the flower shop they run.

My elders keep doing the same things the adults do. They help raise the next generation, work (although if they don't need the money, they get fun jobs like painting, or performing for tips), vacation to fill in the rest of their vacation memory panel, go on dates and so on.

Today I lost my two favorite elders. They were two elderly women, one who was a Romance Sim and her best friend a Pleasure Sim. They shared a tastefully furnished apartment in my Downtown and were quite wealthy. They spent their days hanging around their apartment complex and making friends with all their neighbors, and were like adopted grandparents for all the children in the apartment complex. At night these two vixens would cruise the clubs, or spent time playing cards, or drinking at the bar, and turned many a young Sims heads. Anyway during their last day I realized that these two old woman who had lived together most of their lives were meant to be together, and so they got married, and spent their last few hours in each other's arms before Grim showed up, and took both of them one right after the other.

I'm going to miss Penny Mitchell, and Doris Monroe. They were among the best Sims I've ever had the pleasure of playing.

I mostly let them do things that they did when they were adults: continue along jobs, get to know family members, make new friends. Because I mostly play to see new generations appear, I have at least one of their children move back in after university, and they get to help with raising their grandchildren.

I'm more attached to sims I've had in my game for a while (whether born in game or created/moved in as toddlers-teens) than I am sims who were initially made as adults or elders, largely because I've had more time to get to know them and see them around.

Well, my elders are a great replacement for nannies, i.e. if they live with their children, they can babysit them, rather than hiring a nanny. That way, they can build a bond between themselves and their grandchildren.

I don't think there's anything different in technique about playing elders vs. playing other ages. As long as they're involved in something you can engage with, you're fine. They don't change who they are when they age up and will keep wanting and doing the same things. So they have to stop for more frequent bathroom breaks. So what? Other factors, such as going permaplat or reaching the end of an extended storyline, are far more likely to leave one groping for something for them to do.

CAS elders that haven't been given skills artificially can be a problem, because they don't know how to do anything they really ought to know how to do, like taking care of babies, cooking, and so on. You can bump up cooking skill with hacks, but the only thing that makes a sim good at taking care of babies is taking care of babies. And you need to plan the aspiration you give a CAS elder to ensure you haven't made a sim who's going to roll impossible wants like "relative gets engaged" when she has no relatives, or no relatives old enough to get engaged, or whatever. But that's roughly true of any sim you create. A born in-game sim will have a natural role in life. You shouldn't build people in CAS just to build them and then toss them into the game. Have some idea what you're going to do with them at the time of creation, and they'll be fine.

True, there is a lot you can do with them since work isn't such a big issue anymore. Permanent Platinum Mood helps, too. I guess my problem is that I lose interest in them. Maybe it's that I find them TOO easy to play, or maybe it's that I try too hard to keep them the same as they were as adults.

Of course, trying to preserve how they were in youth is futile because their appearances change so drastically; even if you get default-replacement clothes, they slouch, their voices change, their faces sag, and their hair turns white. It's interesting how hard I try anyway. I need to learn to let go, I guess. That way I can embrace their new life stage and help them to do the same--unless, of course, it's part of their character to want to hold onto their youth, and then I can help them do that and incur all of the disastrous results I've been avoiding thus far. (I wonder if I can find a belly shirt for Grandma...)

Anyway, your stories and suggestions have gotten the creative juices flowing for me. Deryn, your anecdote was especially sweet. I never thought that a Romance Sim could find such a happy ending; this might change how I view them--and play them!

Last edited by DickinsonVampire : 26th Mar 2012 at 02:36 AM.

How do you make your Elder Sims interesting?

Ignore them.

I have about 8 elders that I need to get through. All of their offspring, which is about 15+ sims are almost elders now, so in order to 'help' the other ones die, I ended up putting four elders together in a sort of communal flat thing, so at least they can all entertain each other and sit around at 2am when they wake up each morning and play poker.
It is definitely more entertaining than than playing them in twos. If I really wanted to 'cheat' though, I'd just move them all onto the same lot and click fast forward and leave them to it. xD My computer would not be happy, though.

Ooh, I've dreaded mine turning old myself. In my early Pleasantview, I mostly just ignored the sims once they became elders and couldn't fit into the house, but considering how huge my families were there (10-15 offspring per household), you'd meet elders everywhere you went come Gen 3. I had the same approach to kids in my other hoods, and they never went past Gen 3, so I never had the chance to get elders there.

Then I reset Strangetown, and I've just now started playing Desiderata Valley at all (so no family tree explosions there, thank God). My latest batch of Strangetown elders were the Gen 1 ones packed with the hood, so they just wound up housesitting and taking care of their last kids while their heirs (i.e Johnny, Ophelia and Tank) were off to college. Most of them died of old age, leaving younger spouses behind to keep housesitting until the heirs return. The younger Gen 1 Sims, like Circe, Vidcund, Pascal etc are just turning into elders now, but all of them have still got kids as young as toddlers to care for, so they're still pretty busy.

Desiderata Valley is starting to get tough, though. The houses are smaller there and now that the Gen 2 Sims are growing up and getting kids of their own, their grandparents don't have anywhere to live unless I rebuild the house a little. I'm pretty reluctant to do that, so I'm considering shipping them off to a retirement home. I'm a little afraid of what implications ACR may have there though, considering how I started playing Desiderata Valley because I was sick of the soap opera drama in Strangetown... >_>

Said elders in Desiderata Valley are kicking off their elderhood pretty tumultously, though. Edward Contrary was the first sim in Desiderata to be abducted by aliens on his birthday, Opal Contrary was fired from her job on hers, Marcel Jocque set the house on fire while Sophia Jacque was cheating on him with her daughter's former high school boyfriend on their mutual birthday. Drama likes me, it seems. XD

SnowyDreams, if you have ACR 2.0 you can always move in the elders to a retirement home and 'friend zone' (under the casual menu) all the ones you don't want involved romantically with a particular sim -- rinse and repeat for all the sims on the lot. I also seem to recall that elders (and teens) will only woohoo if there's an ACR controller on the lot, but that might have changed from ACR 1 to ACR 2.0.

My Elder sim was a popularity something, her LTW was to become General. But in reality she worked as a Prep cook. (I built a shed for her Chocolate factory which she got as a Career reward.)
She did not like to clean, and had parties every day.
She Influenced people. She lived with her boyfriend, but they were not married.

Is only the beta version available for ACR 2.0? Its all I could find online.

Yep, that's it, as far as I know.

ACR2 is as done as it'll ever be, unless someone takes it over. There aren't any glaring problems with it though, as far as I know. It's also still quite supported at Simbology by the folks who took the site over from TwoJeffs (with his blessing).

I grow attached to almost all the sims (elder or otherwise) I play. Even when, they're pre-made elders like lazy Herb Oldie, pervy Mortimer Goth or grouchy Consort Capp and evil Olive Specter.

I do believe some people hate their sims as soon as they turn elders and want them to "die already". I really can't relate to them. I truly hope it doesn't depict their real life feelings towards elders.

As far as being interesting goes, those sims with cracked voices and grumpy demeanours are interesting in their own way as they have a unique personality of their own.

Elder sims generally have all the time in the world and are level 10 in many skills and have various Gold badges. Sometimes they make more money at home than what their adult children do. With elder sims around, child care and house care is a breeze. I've only read about the problems that NPC nannies pose, but have never experienced them, thanks to my elder sim grandparents. Also, elder sims can encourage kids really fast! One elder sim encouraged his 1 nice point grandaughter into 10 nice points in no time!

I also really like the high-power wants elder sims keep on getting, like "relative marries", "relative gets engaged" or "get a grandchild". The only disadvantage I believe they have is lazy sims like Herb oldie or Olive Specter etc walk really slow. I've solved that problem by turning them to witch and wizard so they can just do 'magetivestum' Sometimes if I don't want to turn them into witches and wizard, then I make sure all the things they need are close by. An elder sim of mine, who mostly does gardening or fishing has his bedroom closest to that area. In fact, his bedroom directly leads to the house backyard and the kitchen garden.

I really like having 3-4 generations in a family living together. In recent times, joint families are slowly dying out due to a variety of reasons which make people experience a variety of issues, which weren't prevalent a couple generations back, but at least my sims need not worry about those complexities.

The Elder sims can have more wrinkles put on them, with the Mirror if they are prepared to change their appearences, and look older, the wrinkled faces can be found under Full Face Makeup!

I had one elder in one town, so I made him hit on every townie that was female and he got married after he found the perfect spouse. Bad news was he died 3 days after. I made her remarry into my favorite families. She married the brother of the mother and she had her own room in their big mansion.

What I do is have a retirement home for them like all the elders have a trailer to there selves by clicking the door and locking it and when their relatives comes to visit they visit in the grand room. Everyone is an elder and friends some of them marry if their spouse died I like it this way.

I love my Elders! I treat them nicely, because they've usually spent their adult years rearing babies (I play a MEdieval game, so my Adults have on average 5-6 children). I have found that age-appropriate custom makeup makes my Elders actually look like Elders- I use wrinkles and eyebags to help them look bedraggled & tired. Then they play out their days helping with Grandkids, gardening, fishing, baking... they tend to live in their homes with the younger generations until they pass on.

Thats so sad!!

My elder sims typically have children ... (grown adult ones I mean) ... so they will move in with them and help out. I find family members are often better than the nannies and cheaper as well. And of course once they are done helping with the kids they are free to pursue their own interests.