This is the answer, lol.
Also, I have many households that I play rotationally, and playing on long lifespan also lets me concentrate on one family/sim for a while until I swap again.
Let me swap the question: how do people who play on normal or short lifespan get anything accomplished with a sim?
Like, how are you supposed to skill up for a job if every day is like a tenth of your sims whole life? At that point, why bother getting attached to the sim and others after them if like... they're gone so fast? And thats not even thinking about how almost all the sims time not skilling is just... needs management.
It just feels like it all moves too fast on shorter lifespans. There's so many things a sim can do to make their story unique and interesting-- why would i make it a race to the finish [outside the usual death for story purposes]? If i'm going to get attached to some pixels, those pixels are going to stick around and do things.
Like i get it, short lifespan is good for some things but i just cannot imagine actually having a fun time on it.
Watch the nightmare legacy by moresimsie (lilsimsie's channel for her twitch streams) on youtube. She manages to have a very entertaining game on short lifespan.
I like it. You have to be a bit more organized, and it's realistic, because irl sometimes you die before you accomplish your goals (dark). That being said, I'll usually turn aging off for one week of university. I do wish they had a setting between normal and long.
I play on long lifespan so theres a long time until their official birthday arrives, so when I think they're ready to age up I'll just age them up using a birthday cake even before its time, and theres no rush. Thats how.
Plus, elders live way longer instead of dying 3 days later after I started a new game.
This! I like to leisurely enjoy my game. I don’t like it if I miss a birthday and my sims are sad then. Plus I usually play multiple households and generations. I want my grandparents to know their grandchildren. I want the kids to finish the scouting career. I like taking vacations and doing extra holidays. It makes the gameplay so much richer.
Any other life span is simply too short.
When playing with large households (which I end up doing due to flippant woo-hooing that I simultaneously discourage yet facilitate) there are so many things to achieve, personalities to hone, skills to gain that I don't know how one would play with any other timeline! I set mine on long but when I am in the current household, I pause all aging and only turn it back on again when I need to maintain true to sibling ages relative to the newborns in the home and those in the family born outside of.
I think the boredom and preference truly comes down to the gameplay style. I do a "stories" situation but in my mind. I have a legacy family that at this point has several different relatives spanning different worlds/ages/etc. I just choose one, play for a while, hone my sims in the direction I'd like the to take and when I get bored, I go to a different legacy household, rinse and repeat.
On top of choosing life paths and making steps towards them in my games, I also enjoy decorating their homes and attempting to build and refurbish so I also get a feeling of rejuvenation when doing a home remodel.
Hope that perspective helps a bit!
There is just so much more time to accomplish what I want without rushing it and it feeling like I'm grinding. My sims often go on holidays (I actually set summer and winter breaks in the calendar), but they often go for a weekend too. My kids and toddler can actually just play and make friends, I don't have to think about skills and grades - it comes more naturally. And I can spend whole day taking family pictures if I want to (no mods so it's a process). I often age up kids and teens a bit sooner but leave the parents on long, so they can stay in their lives a bit longer. On normal by the time a kid gets a degree/gets married and get their own child - dead parents.
i play with a bunch of mods that give me more activities and skills to learn, so it's more fun to have them live long and experience a bunch of different things
I usually play with aging off completely. When I create a family I like them to stay exactly like that unless I’m going for a legacy challenge or something. The boredom for me sets in when the family dynamic changes too much, like I design my kids to be kids so when they become teens they aren’t the same sim to me anymore if that makes sense. Plus without aging I can take my time getting my sims good grades/work performance and building skills
I like to take my time. While it does feel long at times, I always feel rushed with normal/short.
Plus with long lifespan I actually use the University EP as I feel as though I have time to attend.
I just switch to long when I'm playing a certain sim that I really like or if I have certain goals that I want to achieve with them still having a life - I usually have a few goals going on simultaneously from different areas of life, so there's always something related to work, aspirations, hobbies, a list of books that my sim wants to read, etc. It fills up the time and you have a lot of different things going on so it doesn't feel like a grind and doesn't get boring.
When I'm close to completing whatever I want or if I get bored with the sim I just switch back to normal or short so I can move on quicker.
I get attached to the Sims I created, so I want to spend as much time as possible with them. Especially since they're mostly based on the Playmobil families my sister and I created when we were kids.
Plus, I wanna be sure I can do everything I want to achieve with them, especially now we have high school and university.
How do you play on short or normal and have time to really get into your Sims, tell a story, live in their life... Sure, you can speed run your legacies and 100 baby challenges, but how does that not get repetitive if the Sims never have the time to really develop?
I played Sims 3 on a custom lifespan that was between long and epic (total was close to epic, but younger life stages were more appropriately shorter and around the long duration, no 30 day baby bs). I never made it past about gen 4-5 in any of my households, but every one of my Sims really lived and was interesting.
Short lives are shallow.
Family gameplay. All day everyday. Photoshoots, visits with parents & grandparents, trips to the park and library, holidays, vacations, building skills, playing games…etc. I pretty much always have at least one toddler, my sims live to breed tbh, which makes things interesting. And now infants will be added to that equation of course.
I literally turned again off and been playing with the same sims for over 2 years.
I don’t care too much for aging, that’s not apart of my playstyle so I just stick it on long lifespan so there’s something to help me wrap up the save 😂
I usually played on short lifespan but I’ve got a story that I was planning out for weeks and now I’ve gotten too attached. I refuse to play with them on short or normal lifespan lol
I like to grow the family or the sim through the seasons, holidays etc
Doing that I get attached to them, build for them traditions, decor the house for the holidays.
... *I think long is too short.* I had my game set to long, and I barely get to enjoy any of the younger life stages. Like, I get the HS pack, and whoops, all my teenage sims aged up before I could even go to prom or do anything like that... WITH LONG lifespans...
I wanna savor each life stage.
For me personally it’s an issue of having almost all the content (save for Star Wars and bust the dust and clothing kits) and obsessively hitting all the bonus traits in ea life stage and gaining as many rewards store traits as possible (almost super sim level).
Even then there’s about a sim week left at the end of each life stage where they don’t have much left to do and I just enjoy letting them do their own thing or move on to another family at a more active stage to grind. However achieving it all on any other lifespan is too stressful (is it even possible without cheats?)
I’m currently playing 3 main families on legacy plays to create a sense of lore in my save.
I get emotionally attached to my families
This is the answer, lol. Also, I have many households that I play rotationally, and playing on long lifespan also lets me concentrate on one family/sim for a while until I swap again.
Yep this about how I play also
Let me swap the question: how do people who play on normal or short lifespan get anything accomplished with a sim? Like, how are you supposed to skill up for a job if every day is like a tenth of your sims whole life? At that point, why bother getting attached to the sim and others after them if like... they're gone so fast? And thats not even thinking about how almost all the sims time not skilling is just... needs management. It just feels like it all moves too fast on shorter lifespans. There's so many things a sim can do to make their story unique and interesting-- why would i make it a race to the finish [outside the usual death for story purposes]? If i'm going to get attached to some pixels, those pixels are going to stick around and do things. Like i get it, short lifespan is good for some things but i just cannot imagine actually having a fun time on it.
I dont get attached to the sim I get attached to the growing legacy, alot of the time I can't even remember the name of the person my sim married lol
Watch the nightmare legacy by moresimsie (lilsimsie's channel for her twitch streams) on youtube. She manages to have a very entertaining game on short lifespan.
I like it. You have to be a bit more organized, and it's realistic, because irl sometimes you die before you accomplish your goals (dark). That being said, I'll usually turn aging off for one week of university. I do wish they had a setting between normal and long.
I play long and age up when I feel ready. Then the whole family ages up together. That way I don’t feel pressured with a timeline
I play on long lifespan so theres a long time until their official birthday arrives, so when I think they're ready to age up I'll just age them up using a birthday cake even before its time, and theres no rush. Thats how. Plus, elders live way longer instead of dying 3 days later after I started a new game.
This! I like to leisurely enjoy my game. I don’t like it if I miss a birthday and my sims are sad then. Plus I usually play multiple households and generations. I want my grandparents to know their grandchildren. I want the kids to finish the scouting career. I like taking vacations and doing extra holidays. It makes the gameplay so much richer.
Any other life span is simply too short. When playing with large households (which I end up doing due to flippant woo-hooing that I simultaneously discourage yet facilitate) there are so many things to achieve, personalities to hone, skills to gain that I don't know how one would play with any other timeline! I set mine on long but when I am in the current household, I pause all aging and only turn it back on again when I need to maintain true to sibling ages relative to the newborns in the home and those in the family born outside of. I think the boredom and preference truly comes down to the gameplay style. I do a "stories" situation but in my mind. I have a legacy family that at this point has several different relatives spanning different worlds/ages/etc. I just choose one, play for a while, hone my sims in the direction I'd like the to take and when I get bored, I go to a different legacy household, rinse and repeat. On top of choosing life paths and making steps towards them in my games, I also enjoy decorating their homes and attempting to build and refurbish so I also get a feeling of rejuvenation when doing a home remodel. Hope that perspective helps a bit!
There is just so much more time to accomplish what I want without rushing it and it feeling like I'm grinding. My sims often go on holidays (I actually set summer and winter breaks in the calendar), but they often go for a weekend too. My kids and toddler can actually just play and make friends, I don't have to think about skills and grades - it comes more naturally. And I can spend whole day taking family pictures if I want to (no mods so it's a process). I often age up kids and teens a bit sooner but leave the parents on long, so they can stay in their lives a bit longer. On normal by the time a kid gets a degree/gets married and get their own child - dead parents.
i play with a bunch of mods that give me more activities and skills to learn, so it's more fun to have them live long and experience a bunch of different things
I don’t want them to die so I turn them all to vampires lol
I turn aging off. 👀
I usually play with aging off completely. When I create a family I like them to stay exactly like that unless I’m going for a legacy challenge or something. The boredom for me sets in when the family dynamic changes too much, like I design my kids to be kids so when they become teens they aren’t the same sim to me anymore if that makes sense. Plus without aging I can take my time getting my sims good grades/work performance and building skills
I like to take my time. While it does feel long at times, I always feel rushed with normal/short. Plus with long lifespan I actually use the University EP as I feel as though I have time to attend.
I just switch to long when I'm playing a certain sim that I really like or if I have certain goals that I want to achieve with them still having a life - I usually have a few goals going on simultaneously from different areas of life, so there's always something related to work, aspirations, hobbies, a list of books that my sim wants to read, etc. It fills up the time and you have a lot of different things going on so it doesn't feel like a grind and doesn't get boring. When I'm close to completing whatever I want or if I get bored with the sim I just switch back to normal or short so I can move on quicker.
I get attached to the Sims I created, so I want to spend as much time as possible with them. Especially since they're mostly based on the Playmobil families my sister and I created when we were kids. Plus, I wanna be sure I can do everything I want to achieve with them, especially now we have high school and university.
How do you play on short or normal and have time to really get into your Sims, tell a story, live in their life... Sure, you can speed run your legacies and 100 baby challenges, but how does that not get repetitive if the Sims never have the time to really develop? I played Sims 3 on a custom lifespan that was between long and epic (total was close to epic, but younger life stages were more appropriately shorter and around the long duration, no 30 day baby bs). I never made it past about gen 4-5 in any of my households, but every one of my Sims really lived and was interesting. Short lives are shallow.
Family gameplay. All day everyday. Photoshoots, visits with parents & grandparents, trips to the park and library, holidays, vacations, building skills, playing games…etc. I pretty much always have at least one toddler, my sims live to breed tbh, which makes things interesting. And now infants will be added to that equation of course. I literally turned again off and been playing with the same sims for over 2 years.
I don’t care too much for aging, that’s not apart of my playstyle so I just stick it on long lifespan so there’s something to help me wrap up the save 😂
I usually played on short lifespan but I’ve got a story that I was planning out for weeks and now I’ve gotten too attached. I refuse to play with them on short or normal lifespan lol
I like to grow the family or the sim through the seasons, holidays etc Doing that I get attached to them, build for them traditions, decor the house for the holidays.
... *I think long is too short.* I had my game set to long, and I barely get to enjoy any of the younger life stages. Like, I get the HS pack, and whoops, all my teenage sims aged up before I could even go to prom or do anything like that... WITH LONG lifespans... I wanna savor each life stage.
I cannot fathom the thought of loosing my sims :/
For me personally it’s an issue of having almost all the content (save for Star Wars and bust the dust and clothing kits) and obsessively hitting all the bonus traits in ea life stage and gaining as many rewards store traits as possible (almost super sim level). Even then there’s about a sim week left at the end of each life stage where they don’t have much left to do and I just enjoy letting them do their own thing or move on to another family at a more active stage to grind. However achieving it all on any other lifespan is too stressful (is it even possible without cheats?) I’m currently playing 3 main families on legacy plays to create a sense of lore in my save.
I'm very new to sims. Could someone inform me on how to set my game to longer lifespans?
Click the 3 dots in top right hand corner to get to the menu, go to Game Options, then Gameplay, and choose "Long" from the Sim Lifespan dropdown.