In praise of Salad Days As of late I've been finding myself distracted away from playing my legacy family (or at least their lot) in favor of small lots with couples that are just starting out and working their way up. It first started when I split a legacy heir off to their own lot to do some intense grill cheese training, when I was able to compare the difference in game speed when moving from a 5 story mansion on a 5x5 lot filled with lots of expensive junk, 6-8 residents, and a dozen ghosts to an efficeincy 1 room (with enclosed w/c) cabin outfitted with little more than the basic neccessities and enhabited by 3 sims max. The game just seemed to zip along again. And it's a lot cheaper than upgrading my 'puter again. Then I noticed that I was actually having more fun...getting more of a challange in my play. It seems that getting is better than having. Forcing a sim to scratch and work, overcome obsticals and bad interactions, and fight their way to the top is a lot more satisfying than having them grow up with a silver spoon in their mouth. Who else has found this to be true? What is your opinion?
I have a complete trailer court that is full of bigger families. I do not allow them (usually) to have any hacked objects. (But when things go bad, I usually buy them a hacked painting. LOL just for emergancies). I agree with you, the smaller lots play better and are much more interesting.
We discussed this a little once...in a thread that got off-topic. This has always been my favorite part of the game. I've never played a legacy family. I prefer the struggle. I like small houses. I haven't built a stupendous home in TS2. I played with that multi-story monstrosity known as the Goth family home and one of the huge Victorian homes that came with the base game. I dreaded playing them. I lotbin or bulldoze most of the huge homes now. It's too easy to make it to permaplat and the top rung of the career ladder. I made one neighborhood that is an isolated mountain community. Everyone starts off in a trailer or small cabin. Each family is denied one skilling object...like the chess table or easel. No toddlers get smart milk. Only a few teens get to go to college. I find I enjoy playing this neighborhood more than any other. My sims have to worry about paying for groceries or adding a room onto the house. The majority of my sims are patrol officers, artists stuck carving llamas for tourists, nurses, etc. I find this more realistic, too. I don't know about everyone else but in real life I don't have even one Captain Hero in my whole town! My one community lot is a general store. Under one roof you can buy groceries and clothing. The only pool table in town is located here. One of each musical instrument is provided for the community. Almost everyone congregates here to gossip, play a game of chess, practice the piano, or pick a fight. I haven't quite figured out how to incorporate Downtown into this neighborhood yet. I suppose it will become the equivalent of Mayberry's Mount Airy. It will be the "big" town where they actually have restaurants and bowling alleys. I particularly like this scenario. Small towns frequently have eccentric people. I can have the prim spinster sisters, hermits, the deadly dull grill cheese fans, and the roughnecks that love nothing better than a good brawl. I can envision making a small medieval village with downtown being the "cathedral city" or a town still locked into the 1950's that's focused around the local diner.
When my sims go for groceries or clothes they always go to a little strip mall called Epsteins. There's a couple of pinball machines that attract the neighborhood. The store is always crowded (even late at night.) There are always family and friends wandering in and out, holding conversation with each other. It's cheerful and busy. My other, bigger community lots are generally deserted no matter when I visit them, even though loaded with gizmos. Occasional NPCs. This maybe because Epsteins is the oldest community lot, or maybe I just find it as convenient to my sims as the local Royal Farm mart down the road. Yes, the smaller, struggling families are more fun. I've been forcing myself to stick to my one huge family because I'm pursuing a story line, but I often get sidetracked by the members who have moved out on their own, away from the big family.
Many of my favourite families live on the smallest lots and I have been having great fun trying to fit parking spaces in some of them. Since I got NL I have been experimenting with community lot design and I have had a lot of success so far with a quaint little terrace of row houses that have been converted to commercial use. The entire cellar of the block is quaint night-club with a juice bar, disco, electrosphere plus a restaurant with 8 covers. The ground floor unit that gives access to the club is a chill-out room serving coffee. The other two units are a clothing store (and perfumery) and a convenience store selling groceries, video games and books. The lot is the largest lot and the built-up area is less than 20% of the land area. The rest of the ground is given over to a large pool, a children's playground, and an attractive landscaped picnic area. Somehow the cramped nightclub has worked flawlessly and although the lot is large most of the sim traffic occurs in and around the building so keeping track of the sims present is not much trouble.
I like following my sims through their journey in life, for richer or for poorer, though I find a sim who goes through college becomes "richer" pretty quickly. For one thing, with NL you can now keep all the stuff, if not the money, you accumulated in college. And of course you can take it with you from lot to lot. The townhouses in NL come furnished, at least the two I've bought so far have been, so that frees my sim to spend her money on "important" stuff like a car. I used to try to control an entire neighborhood. Since reloading I'm enjoying following just one sim (so far) through her journey and her quest for true love. I'm trying to figure out how to write it as a story for you all ... Salad days are fun, but being rich can be too ... I love decorating, and it's just more fun if my sims have earned it. And now with NL you can spend money downtown ... my sim loves to eat out. I've noticed that when you move an NPC in they no longer bring $20,000. The most I've gotten is $2,000, and that's after the install so there's no way there's a hack involved. I haven't downloaded a single thing ... anyway, that's nice because it also makes things more of a challenge.
Unless they are romance or pleasure sims, in which case they end up with so many free meal coupons (from the constant dating) that they never have to pay for a meal downtown again. No kidding, with Bug it got so bad I had him leave coupons all over the floor for frat bro's and family members to pick up... It's kind of a crap shoot. After he graduated from college, I had Pierce Hiatt move in with Bug to place hold the training hut and all he brought with him was a whopping $94 simoleons. Later, after Bug had moved out, Pierce married Jennifer (one of his college sweathearts). She married, moved in, graduated, and grew to adulthood in her wedding dress. To my surprise she came into the household with $48 *thousand*, a backpack full of goodies (including the most expensive tv and computer), and a job as a *surgeon* with the included career reward object! Afterword, I changed him (with the r2d2 looking thingie) into a knowledge sim and he and his new bride moved across the street to the newly built "Hunter Pleasantview Community College" as the faculty/proprieters. Press Release: We are please to announce the grand opening of "Hunter Pleasantview Community College (HPCC). HPCC is a regionally accredited (thru the Pleasantview Assoc. of Schools and Colleges), equal opportunity vo-tech and continuing education institution. Inspired by his best friends the Hiatt's, Bug Hunter (of the wealthy and phylanthropic Hunter family) founded HPCC with a generous endowment. He shares Pierce and Jennifer's dream of giving Pleasantview's citizens a chance to broaden their minds, bodies, and chances for advancement. Pierce, once destitute and down on his luck, managed to bootstrap himself through 2 lifetime achievement awards thanks to perserverance, friendship, and the love of a good woman. Tuition (which includes room and board) is normally $20 thousand simoleons for adults (reimbursed by the Pleasantview Seed Grant fund upon graduation), but scholarships and work study programs are available for sims looking for a fresh start. Besides having a wide range of professional training equipment available, HPCC also offers a comfortable homelike family atmosphere. Indeed it is a home, as the Hiatts are living and raising their family on-site. Night classes, indoor parking, and a completely enclosed living/training facility (including indoor pool) also make this an excellent educational opportunity for sims with -ahem- light allergies (Blah!) We at HPCC look forward to serving your educational needs and hope to become a valued member of our community. Pierce Hiatt, BA(Art), SiMBA(Business and Hospital Admin), Phd(Education) Dean, HPCC *Once I finish aquiring a couple more career reward objects and get Jennifer perma-platinum'ed I will upload HPCC to the Sim exchange and post a link here.
That's really cool. How, exactly, do you make a community college? Are you just pretending it's a school? The love of a good woman. LOL. More like the money of a good woman ... I have one coupon so far for a free dinner but I've noticed I wasn't asked to pay the last three times my sim has gone out to dinner, and I haven't had to use it. So either I have a permanent coupon or something else is wacky. Anyway, she's been eating out for free, and yes, she's a pleasure sim. I like them! They're fun to play, and fairly easy to keep happy. Just have a couch handy (she loves to play on couch).
In my opinion, most community colleges just pretend to be schools. J/K...I myself hold an Associates In Applied Science (Social Work) so I sign all my official documents "WereBere, A.S.S." tehehe To answer you question seriously, it's really a warehouse/loft set up to *look* like a community college/vo-tech school. I've outfitted it with every career reward object, musical instruments, exercise equipment (including indoor pool and that wirlygig thingie that came out of the movie "Contact"), a five bed dorm room and comfortable master suite for the Hiatts, and spacious kitchen and dorm lounge area. The Hiatts are both perma-platinum now and at the tops of their career laders so besides raising kids (Jennifer has a "have 10 kids" want), they have all the time in the world to train other sims who are visiting (not to mention their own kids) or might want to move in after/instead of college. It is also on a 4x4 lot and only one story, so despite a house full of goodies and residents it plays without lag.
Like Zy I have found a tiny community lot has loads of potential. With the new lot sizes in NL, I zoned a previously empty street with 4x2 lots and made a local planning rule to the effect that no building alteration will be permitted, all houses to have 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom, max 2 storeys. When I got to the end of the street I had to use a 2x2 lot ... so I zone it community. There I built a little general store and then got carried away. It is mostly a single storey building with a smaller second floor that might once have been a stockroom, office or staff rest room. The proprietor obviously wants to compete with the bigger stores and attractions downtown so ... the unit has been cleverly sub-divided to make a cosy restaurant. The upstairs area has male and female toilets plus a pool table, and juke box. The shop area has been squashed down into one corner at the front where fruit and veg is still displayed in the windows. He also stockes a few fashions and there is a booth beside a pinball machine where the clothes can be tried on. Further back the store counter turns into a juice bar and as if that isn't enough a mysterious door at the rear leads into a small room with a pool table and bubble blower Also wedged into the store are a book rack, video games display, a perfume display and a photo machine. It has rapidly become the community lot of choice for all the sims who live nearby because it is so visible from their front lawns. It is the place to go to stock up on a few groceries when you don't really need any yet because you're bound to meet up with someone new.
Here is the link to download the HPCC lot if anyone's interested: http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/lot_detail.php?asset_id=257819&asset_type=lot&user_id=303059
