@@eilinelisadraaraujo4920 ooh thanks for letting me know!! Mccc has so many features haha I feel like I'm using maybe about 10% of its potential 😅 Thanks for watching and letting me know which one you'd like to watch!!

@@kerrys778 Ooh if you do the evil sim one, I hope you have fun!! I like playing evil sims from time to time, having a chance to use all the mean and evil features I don't use for most of my sims is fun. And thanks so much for watching and letting me know you'd like to see the odd jobs video ☺️

That's so, so kind of you, this comment made my week! Thank you, I'm so glad you find the videos helpful and that they make you want to play again! Are you going to start a new save file? Or try to resuscitate your old save somehow? I hope you enjoy it, however you get back into it!

@@biancabfaa thank you so much for watching, I'm glad you found the video helpful!! I'll definitely be posting more ☺️

@@graciieev thank you!! And ooh lol maybe I can make her a love interest without my glasses 👀 maybe he'll end up with green eyebrows and they can be christmas themed lmaoo

Thank you for watching and commenting!! Ooh I had a friend with nystagmus when I was younger, it seemed quite difficult. I hope my vision isn't getting any worse but it seems like it is to be honest 😅

@starstruck_sims 🙏🏻 I pray your vision isn't getting worse. I'm 55 and my eyes have gotten worse due to age. It is what it is though I'm grateful I can see something. 😊 I am glad I found your channel 😁

@jenjenln I'm glad you can still enjoy the sims! ☺️ And thank you for finding my channel lol!

@@jovysimmer heyy thanks so much for watching ☺️

@@yaboyleo3092 I'll definitely be making more about my playstyle and gameplay ideas!! Thanks for watching 😊

@@landosking9532 that sounds like a nice way to do things! Keeping things moving with the other families while focusing on your main sounds nice. I can definitely see that being a good way to keep invested with the game!

It is a lot of sims to play! Oh noo I'm sorry about the computer performance, around how many were you able to keep as played sims? I have a little over 150 now, and I have some performance issues but I don't know if they're from mods or from the save file itself. I'm glad to hear you got some ideas from the video! I like your idea of having some households not be families. I do that when my sims are young adults before getting married; I'll often have cousins or siblings live together in an apartment or go to university together. I really need to get better at not making all of my sims have kids though lol. I very rarely let any of them have more than 1 kid, but I need to have some without children or else my save file will get too crazy. But I love having the continued storylines and seeing what the kids look like so it's hard to make myself do that lol

@@TheDawnofVanlife right, it's so annoying when that happens lol! I love the freedom of traveling to different worlds as opposed to the older Sims games, but hate that my sims can't meet anybody new 😭😭 And ooh I haven't tried those two mods but maybe I'll check them out sometime, although this one's been working fine for me so far! Good to know other options exist though

@@asherah012 no problem, thank you for watching!! 😊

@@tiare397 thank you so much, I'm so glad you liked the video and thanks for watching! 😊✨️

@@SamJones-qx9hz That is such a good observsation of the tarot card!! I'll draw them more often now, I think they can be really relevant to her story. And thanks for your thoughts on a Morgyn relationship, that makes a lot of sense! I have lots of ideas for the future episodes 🥳

@@radiantpotato thank you so much for watching and subscribing, I hope you like the mods!! Ooh I have those programs but unfortunately I'm not too good at using them. I still need to learn them myself to be honest haha, I have some broken CC that I need to remove 😅 If I become good at them in the future, I'll probably make a video! Thanks for the suggestion 😊 Those kinds of things are really helpful to know!

@@SamJones-qx9hz I love the questions so no worries haha! The updates are a challenge, especially with expansion packs and bug fixes. What I do varies. Sometimes I play offline and won't update my game for about a week (so I don't do the big update before an expansion, I don't download the expansion, and I wait for patch fixes to come out in the days after the expansion pack's release). Then one day I'll just download all the updates and the expansion - this makes things much less stressful lol. But if I'm really excited for an expansion and don't want to wait, then I'll just update the biggest mods (like MCCC and UI cheats), since those updates are done pretty fast, and deal with any glitches for other mods, like the ones in this video, until updates are out. With these mods it usually takes a few days, but then after any patch updates for a new pack, they might have to update the mods again. So it can be a pain to keep track, but these specific mods don't break my game with updates - they might just not fully work like they should until I update them (like maybe my sim can't go to their psychiatrist appointment, for example). Some mods are more game breaking with updates lol not these though, in my experience. There are also EA Forums and Reddit posts about which mods are broken after every update so it's easy to search for your mods there. For my legacy save, I do back it up occasionally. And if there are every any crazy glitches that I'm worried might mess up the families, I'll close without saving and try to find the problem. There is also a mod called Better Exceptions that can locate any problems with your mods (I only use it after updates because it pops up a lot while playing). Lastly, if you're kinda new to mods, I would say to make sure to read the whole post on the creators' pages before downloading, because some of these require you to download some small mods alongside the main one, and some of them have a few different versions of the mod you can choose from, and some have optional add-ons that you can choose to keep or delete once you download them. It might be useful to keep a document with all the links and any useful information like which version you downloaded and when etc. I don't do that but if you only have a few mods then that might be good. I might start doing that for my bigger mods

@@starstruck_sims Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. I think I'll try these out and see how I go - might start in a save that isn't too precious and perhaps wait until this latest event gets going. It was always my intention to wait until the game has finished releasing new packs to start my modding adventures but that doesn't look like it's happening any time soon so maybe it's time to just do it 😄

@SamJones-qx9hz LOL yeahh it seems like they're just gonna keep going 😅 Trying them out in a different save, like you said, is a good idea!

@@TheSarcasticRat1 no problem!!

Thank you for watching!! ☺️

@@clairedrn7421 no problem, thank you for watching!!

Ooh I love your comment so much, thank you for sharing your strategies too!! I do have one family where it's an 8 sim household because it makes sense of them and I try to keep all the others small. When I do play that 8 sim household, I try to focus on one sim for a few days and let the others have autonomy (which can be stressful but I like seeing what skills and stuff they pick up on their own, especially toddler/child/teen sims). I definitely need to work on not having all my sims be A students, it kinda just happens that way but I want to make more of an effort to not have them be A students lol I've had a few like that so far that stay at B or C grades but I'd like to have more, it's just more realistic. Your lifespan method is really interesting! Do you ever miss more than one life stage of a sim that way? I can be fine if I miss, like, the toddler stage for example but if I miss toddler, childhood, and half of teen, I'd feel like I missed too much lol! I loooove your idea of getting more celebrity sims into the world that way, I'm huge on celebrity gameplay (a lot of the big drama in my game comes from either celebrity or occult stuff), so I'm definitely going to get more celebrity sims from the gallery! Thanks for watching and commenting!

@@starstruck_sims nah, I only have aging on for a sim week with one family, since I have long lifespan on when I do and have even customized it since with MCCC (my pregnancies last 5 days not 3, and my newborns are newborns for 5 days before they become infant) 7 sim days doesn't age anyone to quicky. I might miss a whole newborn stage or an occassonal birth, but never an entire infant or toddler stage. Then aging is off again while I visit every family in the rotation before I land back on my age up family. You don't catch every birthday and have to do clean-up on outfits after auto-aging, but sometimes game selected traits on age up are fun to discover and have to deal with and work with (and justify :D). For me it keeps the game fresh. I also go big for the birthdays I do catch and since many of my sims know each other, they are at the party anyway.

@TheDawnofVanlife ahh i see i see, that makes sense! I might try custom lifespans sometime. Right now I'm trying out considering one sim day = 3 months (based on the pregnancy timeline), and I'm keeping track of this family's exact ages lol I've never done that before but it's fun.

I honestly love hearing how other people play there rotations and that we all have our own unique ways of doing it. I love love Sims 2, but I did always sense there was a ‘right way’ to play rotationally that developed among the fans of the game (including me). Some of that also had to do with how the game itself worked. When it came to time passing so you kind of had to work within that game rule base. For all the things that are complicated and frustrating about Sims 4, as a rotational player I think I got happier with it when I stopped trying to play it like Sims 2 (Sims 2 is still a banger). there are so many customization options with aging and who ages when (even in vanilla game) and neighborhood stories is also more customizable then people give it credit for. Even without mods, there’s so much you can tinker with in game settings. And yeah it takes some experimentation to find your personal special sauce, but I like that the options are there.

@TheDawnofVanlife I love hearing other people's styles too, it's really interesting! Thanks for the nice conversation ☺️ Ooh wow I didn't realize that about the Sims 2, I wonder how much that influences players today still in how they play the game. I was a kid then so I don't remember too much of how I played, but I was also much more into Sims Bustin' Out and Urbz than the main games of the franchise, so I definitely missed the community aspect of the games back then (being on playstation also, I never played with mods until the sims 4, so I wasn't involved with the online community until then also). Do you still play the sims 2 now sometimes? I agree about neighborhood stories and game settings being very customizable! Neighborhood stories options are so useful for my sims' townie friends

I try to write each generation's information in a separate document and keep all those documents together! I write about their relationships with their family/friends, why I gave them certain traits, their future plans, and anything interest that happened to them or about their personality that I might forget if I don't write it down. And using the Sims Legacy Hub family tree is really helpful too for me

@@LunarsimmerYT thank you, it's really fun so far!!

@@raynereisinger826 I'm glad you found it helpful and if you do try rotational gameplay, I hope you enjoy it!! ☺️

@@starstruck_sims It's only been a day in the save and I'm loving it, I made an apartment building full of different families and I'm obsessed with it so far! 😄

@raynereisinger826 ooh that sounds so fun!! Enjoy playing ☺️

@@SamJones-qx9hz thank you so much!! I still need to add the rules somewhere, I'll probably put them in the description when I have time tonight! And yes the magic hq definitely needed a rebuild haha I really didn't like playing in the original one, it was so massive and didn't have everything I needed. I made this one more like a dorm style upstairs so I often have my young spellcaster sims live there. It's on the gallery under MasheenaSims if you're interested in downloading it!

I'd say the biggest thing I do is look for hints of conflict. If that's conflicting traits or lifestyles, for example, I use that to make difficult family relationships. Doesn't always have to be huge crazy drama (although of course that's fun!), but even just estranged family members can be interesting. Having different power dynamics can also help, whether that's some family members with more money, or more power like if they're occults or celebrities etc, that can create some division too. And just in general I try to choose all their traits based on their environment as they're growing up. A newborn that's always screaming will get fussy or sensitive when they're an infant; an infant who gets mostly speech milestones might become a charmer or silly as a toddler, and so on. And that stuff also influences their relationships, so if one parent is very busy maybe the child isn't close with them or maybe they're clingier. I have a couple videos on my channel for this, "How I never get bored playing the Sims 4" and "How I make the Sims 4 more interesting" with more ideas and strategies I use! Thanks for watching btw ✨

Thank you for answering and for the great tipps!

@@SamJones-qx9hz Yes, the big families are soo much work! All of mine are small right now except the one I'm currently playing, 7 sims and a pet 😅 I usually play sith autonomy off, but with them I have to leave it on or it would take me sooo long to play them haha. I usually play for one life stage before moving on. Basing it on the kids' life stages since the adult ones are much longer. So I'll stay for the whole toddler stage, then move on, for example. For young adults, I'll stay for the whole university stage (if they go, maybe about 60 or 70% of my sims do), and then post-university until they have a baby.

@starstruck_sims Thank you. I usually play for a season (14 days) which worked fine in TS2 as seasons froze as you rotated, where TS4 seasons keep progressing which makes it difficult to play families through each season concurrently (I hope that made sense 😅) This is something I've been struggling with and looking for alternatives so thank you. I also really like your idea of rotating through family groups - I think that would help keep storylines flowing more easily. I love how your family has grown - can't wait to get some generations going in my game. If you feel like sharing I would be interested in knowing what information you record for individual sims to help with your storytelling? All my records and planning are written and I seem to have little bits all over the place 😅 Thank you again for your videos, they have been so helpful ❤️

@@SamJones-qx9hz ooh so you could play one family with spring, for example, and then switch to another family and it's still spring? That's cool, then you don't have 5 million Winterfests like with the sims 4 haha. I only had base game for sims 2 so I didn't know! I also play with 14 day seasons, in the sims 4 though. I just feel like 7 days are too fast lol. The type of information I write down for sims are why I gave them certain traits, the relationships with their families, what their future plans are, what their strengths/difficulties are, and anything I might forget if I leave that sim for a while. I also need to organize my notes haha they're in several different documents 😅

@@SamJones-qx9hz and thank you so much for watching, I appreciate your comments!! Oooh off the top of my head I'd say the Relationships Family and Pregnancy mod by Lumpinou and also lots of adeepindigo's mods. I'll make a video on this!!

@starstruck_sims Thankyou! That would be so useful.

@@SamJones-qx9hz I've posted the video now!! Thanks again for your suggestion 😊

@@starstruck_sims Thank you! 😍

@@iryna9483 thank you so much, I'm glad you liked the video!! Ahh I think I saw that one and couldn't decide between the two for a while. I liked the design on the reaper's rewards one more but felt like it was too chunky. It was a hard choice!

@@katehale7603 Thanks for watching!! 😊

@@cecilymarie I'm so glad you liked the video and that you have some new ideas!! Something I've also done recently in my own gameplay is looking at sims who are super positive and turning that into something interesting. Like sims who maybe think they're the best sim ever, and how that could impact their mindset and how they also interact with others. I have a sim right now who's very generous and empathetic, but he has some distant family members who are villains/criminals and have caused his immediate family a lot of problems. He's gonna confront them, thinking his kindness will win no matter what, but it's gonna backfire big time 🤭 So even with the sims who seem perfect, I think there are ways to make them more interesting too! Thanks again for watching and good luck with your sim stories!

@@zetka_ meee 😅 I'm a control freak with them BUT i very rarely play with autonomy on. Because them doing dumb, out-of-character things makes no sense to me lol so usually it's all the way off, especially when playing with infants or newborns. Playing with small households also helps me a lot! Do you typically big households? Another strategy I use (when I occasionally play with autonomy on), is to just focus on one sim per day in the household, and rotate between them. It goes much faster. With the other sims, I'll just occasionally check in to make sure they're alive and ready to go to work/school the next day

@@LunarsimmerYT thanks!!

@@SamJones-qx9hz thank you so much for watching and commenting!! I'm really glad you enjoy the videos 😊✨️

@@iZellee thank you so much!! 😊

@@daedigi thank you so much!! I'll do aliens soon!

@@simssaves4980 Great!! I'll do an alien video soon! 😊

@@TownieSimBuilds thank you so much!! I love your videos btw!! 😊 magic school in Glimmerbrook is super fun, I think it's the easiest since the magic Sages are there already and there's a ton of spellcasters around haha. Enjoy it!!

@@tatermister5045 thank you so much!! I'm glad you liked the video!!

@@SamJones-qx9hz thank you so much for watching!! I'm glad you like them 😊

@@SamJones-qx9hz that's a great question!! I'll have to do some testing to see what might work best, but if I can come up with good tips, I'll make a video! If I do, I'll try to give "best results" for different types of outcomes, like more attraction or less, and definitely the one-sided ones, that's really interesting!!

@@awonderingsinner666 thank you so much!! I want to post some soon, but I'm not sure what to start with haha. Maybe I could do a rags to riches with Lovestruck 🤔

@@SamJones-qx9hz thank you so much for watching and commenting!! I'm playing the mermaid school right now in my own legacy and it's quite fun, so hopefully the video will still be useful! I might show a split of ideas in that video for both mods and non-mods if I can 🤔

Thank you so much, that's so nice of you😭🩵 I'll keep posting more consistently, so hopefully more people will find my videos! Thank you for watching and commenting!!

Ooh and that's a great idea about summer break! Like just take the vacation days from school? That's a great point. I think the vacation day system could be used for lots of interesting gameplay ideas and is probably underutilized by most players!