I don't really believe that "that most [Sims] players play the game to torture their sims and put them in perilous situations for the drama", as came up in another current thread, but it does seem to me that a lot of people here, regularly do repeat "Play-Throughs" usually with Maxis pre-mades. This idea really doesn't appeal to me at all. It seems so different to life as I experience it.

For myself, I think I see my Sims as fellow players, like myself in the great game we call "Life". We only get one go at it, so it's up to each of us to make the most of it. For my Sims, I feel my rôle should be to help them give it their best shot. If they, or I, mess up, we don't get another chance, so we try to play it like it matters. Now I suppose, if you do repeat play-throughs, I suppose it doesn't matter nearly so much. If Brandi Broke has a bad life and dies young in this play-through, then you can give her a better life next time.

That really wouldn't satisfy me. It's several years now since I last played Pleasantview and I'd like to go back to it. But when I do, I won't be starting a new play-through -- I'll be resuming where I left off. In my Pleasantview, Brandi hasn't even had her third baby yet (and, since I've got Tarlia's version, that could be a boy or a girl). Another oddity in my game is that, since I last played Pleasantview, I've put in LizzLove's "No Jealousy at all" mod. No jealousy in Pleasantview will certainly give it a different vibe! With Don, Daniel, Nina and Jan Kellerman all free to do as they please, will it all just turn into a massive orgy?!

That I won't do repeat play-throughs is also why I don't play an Überhood/Megahood -- having started Veronaville, Pleasantview and Strangetown, I can't start a new 'hood with them all combined, because that would mean making new versions of Sims who are already in my game. No! In my game, each Sim has one life in one 'hood (which may have sub-hoods attached), and I try to help them make the most of that life. And I suppose I'm not as much into the Maxis pre-made playables as many others. The Playables have their place, but I'm just as happy to hang out with my CAS Sims, or Maxis townies-made-playable.

So what about the rest of you? Do you do repeat play-throughs? If you do, how do you decide when the play-through is over? Rather than doing what I think is the obvious thing, of keeping on playing to see what happens next?

Whatever you think about about repeat play-throughs, I'd like to hear what you all think about them. Do you do them or not? And why? / Why not?

I think of repeating your playthrough as "resetting the game". When I play other games, sometimes I get the whim to start from the beginning so that I can do things differently/better. Sometimes I feel like the progress I've made in a game is too "messy", and I want to start over so that I can have another chance in a neater way. For example, when I used to play the Pokémon games, there'd come a point where I realized I had skipped several tasks or advanced too quickly, among other things, and I'd start over to take my time in each part of the game and "do it perfectly", I suppose. That's just to state an example.

With the sims, I never re-start a neighborhood because I never play the pre-mades . I've tried, but I don't like it as much. However, when I started playing my current neighborhood, which is supposed to be a combination between a BACC/Integrated neighborhood/Multiple legacies challenge, I came to a point where I thought I had made "too many mistakes" or "bred my sims too much" etc etc etc, and though I didn't start it over (because I didn't have a back-up from the very beginning of my hood), I did create other neighborhoods with other characters, with the same objective. So, in a way, I was resetting the game.

Nonetheless, I always abandon my new hoods and go back to my main one because of how much progress I've made in it. So... I guess it totally depends on the player. I am a big fan of resetting games and starting over, but I don't do it in this particular gameplay I have.

For my main hood, Lacuna D, I made an early version of it that I just wasn't happy with. So I built a new version, and cloned the sims to put them in there. So in a way I did replay that one. (Lacuna D also has some sims from other games in there too; for example a randomly generated apartment townie in an old neighbourhood became such an icon that he was cloned and added to Lacuna D too, alongside Sherman Boggle from Lifestories, Wade from Strangerhood, Marky Sharky and various other silly stuff).

But for most neighbourhoods, I create all of the sims (and the terrain, and the lots) from scratch so that they are really unique. It's fun to do!

Of course, there is also a HUGE exception, a sim who has been replayed a million times in a million games and every iteration of The Sims I've played. My avatar sim, Sim Sample. He's been killed a million times in every way possible, but in Lacuna D he has a very happy and prosperous life (prolonged by elixir). I put him in pretty much every Sims game I play (usually as a townie). I avoid putting him in hoods I share though, he's really annoying!

So usually, my sims have one life, and one life only (except for Sim Sample). I play very slowly, and often agonise over life decisions for them. One rare occasion was when I replayed after a bad house fire when I was trying out a mod to make fires more dangerous; the sims all died (except for one toddler), many NPCs died also. But what swung it was a pregnant cat that succumbed, I just couldn't bear that and exited without save!

I am one of those people who repeats playthroughs. I have played all three of the base game neighborhoods + Bluewater Village in different iterations many times over. (I never got into Riverblossom Hills, though, and my game doesn't support later neighborhoods.)

I look at my Sims playing primarily as storytelling, and it's taken me multiple playthroughs to get to know these characters really well. Because I know them so well, I can use them to try out different scenarios I want to play. For instance, if I want to really focus on university and its different permutations--well, here are some teens who are ready to go to college that I can use for that. Or I want to try playing supernaturals, I have some readymade characters to try that out on. If I want to try an apocalypse scenario or try to get everyone to achieve their LTW, I can play that. Then I can reset when I'm done playing out whatever scenario I'm trying.

I do have a megahood of the three base game neighborhoods, all renovated, + downtown and all three universities set up in my backups folder that I like to pop in when I'm looking for fresh ideas or I want to try new mods or ways of playing. I know that I'll have a range of characters I can try things out on, to fit almost anything I want to try.

I haven't always played this way. When I first got the game years ago, I only played my own Sims, and I played neighborhoods that I made up myself. I remember one I liked very well that was like a remote small mountain town, and the only premades I put in there were the Ramaswamis so they could own the souvenir shop. But I always get to a point where I feel like I'm done with each neighborhood, and I want to try something different, and I have to admit that using the premade neighborhoods gives me a shortcut because I don't really like building or making Sims in CAS. So I am able to start playing out my ideas right away with the premade neighborhoods and not have to bother with the extended setup.

I know there is a lot of fan canon about the premade Sims, but the truth is that these characters can be taken in so many different directions and interpreted in so many different ways. There is no one Sim who is Brandi Broke or Nina Caliente or Vidcund Curious--there are infinite varieties. That's why it's fun to read about other people's playthroughs, because they may interpret these characters in completely different ways. I got into a conversation online with someone the other day who compared the Grunt family to the Corleone family from The Godfather, which would never have occurred to me. I was fascinated by their very different but also completely valid interpretation of these same basic characters.

I do occasionally check out other prepopulated neighborhoods for download to see if there's anything I might want to try, but most of the ones that interest me require all the EPs, so I can't play them. I enjoy watching YouTube Let's Plays about custom neighborhoods more than premade neighborhoods because I can't experience them for myself.

I don't repeat play-throughs because I don't do play-throughts in the first place?

I am not quite sure what a play-through is - my hoods have no end, so I have not played any of them through?

If I play (normally my own custom) a hood, I either play it until it does the vanishing thing into space (my first one); or it becomes too big to enjoy and feels more like working (in which case the hood is being put on ice, somewhere else on the pc - but I lost some of those with my pc breaking down 2 years or so ago).

As for the vanilla hoods, here is my record:

Pleasantview - 4 days, or so, back in 2005 or something. Left Don in a pool without a ladder. Never went back.

Around 3 days into Pleasantview after having bought the game, I decided that I can make better sims, build better (at least more playable! even though they were very ugly) houses and have more fun with my own hood. After all, that is what I did in Sims 1.

Strangetown - I actually played that one longer than any of the others. But, having already started my first custom hood (the one which went the vanishing into space way later) I probably stopped close to the end of playing it through (I felt I sorted out everyone by then, it was time to leave them and I was a bit tired of the sand).

Veronaville - Opened the game, saw Shakespeare. Okay, I love most of Shakespeare, but it was enough to make me close Veronaville rather quickly again. Until this day, I have NO idea who the characters actually are, although I remember the fairies.


Riverblossoms whatever - I played a week or so. The houses sucked and I did not fall for the plant sim. But it brought me the Ramaswami and Ottomas families and they still make me happy As does the farming, planting, seasons - everything I can have in any hood.

Desiderata Valley - the one hood I still play once in a blue moon. One day, this hood may be played properly by me It may be added to my uberhood, which I may make one day too. I love the hobbies and the way my sims love talking about their hobbies And, of course, I like the bin sims.

Belladonna Cove - I hate playing apartments, and I discovered that I hate playing apartments within 10 minutes or so, so another hood where I don't really know the characters. (I don't mind building an apartment once in a while). But I like the bin sims

Bluewater Village - While I tend to add Bluewater Village to all my custom hoods, I have only played those characters once or twice (except Chester and the Larsons - the reason I keep adding Bluewater to all my custom hoods). However, I know these characters well enough to use them when I need them and had had Florence, Gilbert and Malcolm all running other businesses than the ones they came with in my hoods. They are also great when sims need friends. (I have never wanted to get rid of the friend requirement for careers, it is actually something which I like).


However!

I can quite see the sense in starting over. Not all of us play with aging off. Sims can die natural deaths long before they have reached their potential. Sims can make different choices (or the player, at least, can make it for them)?

A player learns so much along the way. I have learned a lot since I started playing - I have become quite good at owned businesses, farming, fishing and having sims earning money without working too. I can imagine wanting to put that knowledge to use in a hood that you may feel you have not played as well as it could have been played - which means that the sims and the hood could have ended up so much better.

The day I decided to make a retirement subhood, it was more of - oh, hell, the elders are all going to die in my next rotation, so let me see what I can do about it. I honestly had no idea of the joy, the fun and the incredible satisfaction the retirement hood would give me. I think it is a feature that any hood I may play (again, or not) will have in the future. From widowhood, second marriages, parties, birthdays and funerals - it just rocks. And, using Sophie-David's mods, seeing my retired rock star rocking up to teach the class at university was just the cherry on the top!

I think players are on a spectrum of those who kill off sims for fun. Just take a look at YouTube and things like "I left my game unpaused for 24 hours and watched" Or "I built this maze on the largest lot with 8 sims and 1 fridge" type thing. They are playing it like a survival game. To the far other side is AndrewGloria Who has never had a sim die and doesn't intent to ever let that happen! Thankyou very much.

Most players fall somewhere in-between those. A lot of medieval style players include more death, either from ROS roll. (I redesigned that ROS to include no death lol I'm known as the 'fairy Godmother' on teaaddicts streams because I use my Twitch stream points to save the kids) Or from sets or mods with small chances of death. Such as child birth death chance mod. So while I lean towards AndrewGlorias side I do have the occasional death. My medieval life span is considerably shorter than my modern game and I had an elder die last play though.

I just realized I didn't even answer the question. I've never really done a repeat playthrough? I dabbled with pre-mades some years back but then I moved onto playing custom hoods. I made an Uber hood 2-3 years ago and this is my first serious playthough of them. That said I do also have the early Pleasantview and Strangetown hoods with those same sims a lot younger. Still doesn't feel like a repeat in the truest sense though.

I love the pre-mades so I've played through them all over the years. I've never been especially tech savvy so whenever I got a new computer it just seemed inevitable to restart rather then try to transfer the data. Also probably would have run into bugs eventually even if I did. I only learned about clean neighborhood templates a year ago. Pleasantview is the one I like to go back to the most so we'll use it as an example. Somehow, I always manage to find new paths to take. I started a new run of it last month and this is the first time I've ever let Cassandra succeed in marrying Don. It's also the second time I've ever broken up Daniel and Mary-Sue. I've always felt like the game wants me to fix them, but this time I asked myself what has he done to earn forgiveness? But unlike the other time I divorced them, Daniel is now married Kaylynn and Mary-Sue kept the house. In past playthroughs I've had Dina get knocked up by Don, then catch up with her sister so Dina became a witch so she could invite the two traitors to parties and force them to act like chickens. Even though its the same characters, but I always find something new to do. The next generation is also always really exciting. I adore watching my sims grow up and I never know what the game will give me.

The playthrough continues until it stops being fun/I get bored, I lose track of where I was in cycling through households, or life pulls me in some other direction and I don't have time to play. Sometimes its a combination of all of these, sometimes its just one.

As a premade player, I repeat playthroughs often. I first played the premades in 2004 and still play them on and off to this day. There's a story, Fortune and Romance by Whattheskell, that describes the different versions of the premades' lives like parallel universes that resonated with me. The playthrough is finished when it is (unsatisfying answer, but at some point it just feels done), often when the originals start dying off, or when things deviate too far away from the initial plan for the neighborhood. Like someone else, I also used to start a new playthrough with each computer. Back before cheap USB cards and the cloud, it didn't occur to me to try and move my saves to a new hard drive.

I haven't really done any reruns. I've played Pleasantview etc. more than once, but that's because I played them a few times, then got bored, then tried them again. Now I don't even have Maxis neighbourhoods in the neighbourhoods list. I have backups of my custom neighbourhoods, so I could technically restart one, but I'll probably get around to that when I get around to tidying up my Sims folder (so, never) lol.



It irked me when the person said that. I'm glad that not everyone agrees with them. XD You don't have to have the same mods in every neighbourhood. You can take out the no jealousy mod and put romancemod back in so Don can't run amuck. XD



I tried playing an asylum challenge once. Two sim days in and I had to force myself not to do stuff for sims 'just so they know where stuff is'. XD By that time I think I'd trained them somehow, because they were just fine on their own.

Playing reruns as an alternate universe is an interesting idea.

I have and I haven't?

I first bought the game when it first came out, and I mostly played a custom neighbourhood that I haven't ever returned to (though I do still have it saved, so I suppose I could if I wanted to). But I did also play Pleasantview a bit (I can't really remember what happened), Belladonna Cove quite a lot (I was half way through converting it to a Victorian era town), and some of Strangetown - mostly because I played most of an apocalypse challenge there. Then TS3 came out and I switched over to that, and gave most of my TS2 discs away to my cousin. Then I moved countries and left that computer behind.

Then the UC came out and was given away for free, and I thought it might be fun to play TS2 again. At the time I didn't have any of my old saves or downloads, so I was starting again from scratch, and I decided to play Strangetown. This version of Strangetown is therefore "what actually happened" to me - the few memories I have of the previous version is maybe a dream someone had (possibly Nervous Subject, who there married Pascal and they both had twins, so there was chaos with four babies and a toddler - in "reality" he's married to Ajay and they adopted the Newsons). I won't ever be "restarting" Strangetown, or Pleasantview that I've also been playing.

I also don't like to have multiple versions of the bin sims, so they each live in one town and one town only. The Picaso, Ottomas and Newson families all live in Strangetown, Julien Cooke lives in Pleasantview (and probably the Gavigan and Traveller families will move there too), and if I ever decide to play another neighbourhood then different sims will move there. The only exception is "Testville" where I test out various mods-in-progress, that does have other copies of bin sims - but that town is not seriously played.

I personally love the idea of multiple playthroughs, even if I haven't exactly gotten around to doing it yet. In my game I have a few mods that make it easier or more common for my sims to die younger and as a result it can really stifle a sims' potential if they die of, say, a house fire at 25. That's one branch of the neighborhood family cut, and one less sim to contribute to the next generation. I find it super fascinating to potentially go through a few iterations of the same sims to see what paths they get to lead (or lackthereof). Even if Zoe Zimmerman unexpectedly died of a cold in this playthrough of Strangetown, next time, she may survive to be the last original sim of the neighborhood with a huge legacy that rivals the Curious brothers.

A fair few of my sims lead short lives or meet tragic ends, but I find that way more fun than artificially prolonging their lives if something does happen. Real life doesn't kill with intention, it just kind of happens out of circumstances or luck. It doesn't mean I don't go out of my way to save some sims if I just get a terrible playthrough (Kristen Loste, for example, lost every one of her roommates to tragic circumstances, Lola with disease, Erin with childbirth, and Chloe with fire, then proceeded to get the arson burglar which, with more dangerous fire, is a garaunteed death sentence), but generally I roll with deaths like any other autonomous behavior. There are infinite possibilities with a game like The Sims and the potential to have comparisons and build alternate stories or timelines is a beautiful butterfly effect that deepens the ties I have to my hoods.

I don't do playthroughs over. It's like there's only one 'true' version of a neighborhood that was played, in my mind-for instance-I do have a early iteration of Tinsel Town available where some of the founding couples have just gotten married, a couple are engaged or single. Likewise for Arundel-there is the one I'm playing and the one where nobody has gotten married or died yet.

As opposed to Tinsel Town now, (Day 64) where all the founders are old, dead or near death-and their children, grandchildren are adults, it would be a little unsettling to repeat the town to see if a new 'version' would work well or differently.

The game provides one with endless playthroughs if you want to repeat it constantly-but I think once is enough. Humans don't get a repeat, and neither do my pixels. I also do not ordinarily resurrect anyone once they have died.

I largely play custom hoods and no, I don't ever restart them from the beginning.

I even lost one at some point and only had a save from a much earlier time point - I opted not to play that hood any more. I still have the backup in case I change my mind, but I don't expect I'll go back to it. It's too confusing - I don't like having multiple versions of the same sim.

I have played the premade hoods a few different times because I haven't saved a backup and I've been through more computers than I can count with this game, so I've just started them again a different time. I think I played all three original hoods when I was younger, and when each new EP came out (but not for long since honestly I found them quite boring) then I played a megahood for a while, which was fun, but I regretted the fact I'd started it without the Pleasantview townies and did something wrong with Downtown so I didn't have the Tricous. It also had way too many random townies whereas I really wanted to get my sims to interact with each other.

Because I was frustrated with this, I made three mini-megahoods, though I can't remember what combinations I did now. So I had another iteration of the sims I played through this. But I didn't play that for very long.

I have been considering starting another Megahood so that I can set it up in the way I wanted to, since playing that big old megahood was fun, but I don't know if I want to get into a new megahood from the start. I might just get the backup of the old one back, if I want to play it.

I have made self-sims of myself, my partner at the time, random friends and family and my IRL kids more times than I can remember. So I "play them through" multiple times. But I rarely ever do much with them because I don't want them to grow up.

I have "played through" a few different challenge scenarios more than once. The asylum challenge, the apocalypse challenge, the 20 woohoo challenge, the legacy challenge (never got that far with this - about generation 3 I think). Usually when I play a challenge, I end up trying to expand/fill the whole neighbourhood, so it feels like a coherent neighbourhood to me and therefore I want to continue playing it. When I've played through challenges multiple times, I use different sims.

I played Sedona by the hood building group - I absolutely loved this, it was so fun - but I lost the save, and I don't want to start it again and have the sims live different lives. I did want to play Emerald Heights, though - because I helped create sims and lots for it. I had added it to Sedona, but never played it very much. I am considering the Family Bin challenge as my next non-custom hood, so I might add Emerald Heights to that when I finish the challenge part.

My current hood is a challenge hood - the one that I lost the up to date backup for, I liked playing a lot which is why I restarted the challenge as a new hood. But with totally new sims.

The other save I'm playing is my UK-themed/styled hood. I started this one because I fell in love with the hood "Elsewhere" by Plasticbox and I made several subhoods for it - "Anywhere" which is meant to be a generic, middle class suburb, (This could be Rotterdam or anywhere, Liverpool or Rome...) "Nowhere" which is supposed to be a run down, no-hope council estate. "Somewhere" which is the university, to play on the term "He's going somewhere in life". I wanted to play with social class in this hood but it never really got off the ground because I couldn't figure out my plan for it really, and I made some mistakes - I deleted sims (which I later found out is bad, and then even later found out isn't bad and what I thought was corruption was just mod conflicts). I deleted some skintones so a lot of sims have S1 skintone. I let all the AL social townies into the hood and then regretted it because there are too damn many of them and they are all so samey. Despite Elsewhere being gorgeous, the houses are too small and cluttered and I find them annoying to play. I wished I'd set Elsewhere up as the subhood, with Anywhere being the main hood (and didn't know about HoodReplace to swap them). I have learnt that even though tiny houses are fun to build, I need them to have quite a specific format if I want to play them without getting frustrated. I've also learnt that I dislike playing high rises, and I shouldn't start with too many lone, single sims, because they all end up extremely boring with no drama (unless it's a scenario like a challenge, anyway).

So I'm taking my time to build up a totally new one instead, the way I want it, I made my own SC4 terrain. I like to have different options when I play so I switch between the Anywhere/Elsewhere etc hood and use this as a testing ground for new house builds, mods, CC and so on before I let those things into my new hood I'm creating from the ground up, I also play the 20 woohoo/where did all the men go challenge hood. (strict notownieregen and antiredundancy, create 1 playable man and 30 or so playable women, let them all fight over the extremely limited NPC men, and try to figure out how to make more spawn without cheating, all while the one playable man is trying to fulfil his 20 woohoos LTW but he's only allowed to woohoo with playables and there must be a risk of pregnancy - it's a riot!!)

I may or may not have had a short-and-dramatic "let's put these sims through hell" time period in my early simming days. Potentially also during my first rounds of TS3 and TS4. Mostly to test out causation and correlation... (I'm always curious)

I don't think I've repeated any play-throughs, no. It's possible I've played some similar storylines at times with the same or similar sims, but when it comes to premades (which I haven't played much the past 10+ years) I've never been very adherent to the TS2 storylines. I prefer making custom sims, and don't tend to make the same family twice (except for storytelling purposes - I sometimes need stand-ins for swift changes, or the same sim sim with variations in skins/etc. for the same play session).

I'm currently remaking my story hood, though. More out of necessity. The thing was getting quite large, had a heap of old lots I didn't quite know what to do with, was spread across at least 3 different hoods, and the main hood did have 1000+ sims (which it really didn't need), so I thought I'd make a slimmed-down version with some updated/cleaned buildings, plus cleaned-up versions of the sims. Also, using clean/empty templates (to carve down the amount of sim files).

They live somewhat peaceful, happy lives as actors in my actual game (nobody dies, anyway), but storywise, their continued happiness and safety is fair game

I've played through Strangetown many times, but only because the previous version became too badly corrupted. I miss all of the born in game sims I've lost. I've played through the other premade neighborhoods maybe once each. Now I mostly play custom neighborhoods.

I am a perpetual restarter .. but it's by design :P

I have a hood.. well it's a multi hood project .. and I want to do it all up right. To allow myself to still have some sim play time I play "throw away" hoods ...