More Awesome Than You!

I'm just curious, really...

At what points, if any, do you decide to just wipe your neighborhoods back to their un-altered states (be it back to the shipped state, or whatever 'clean' template, whatever) and start again?

I never intend to, but I always start over when I get my hands on a new expansion. I think about going back to the Sims I created previously, but by then I've lost most of my (for lack of a better term) emotional connection to those characters. So I start over with a new expansion, play until I get bored, and abandon the game until the new expansion comes out... and wipe those characters out.

What about you? When do you just want to restart?

I create new 'hoods. After I don't play a particular 'hood for a month, I back it up on my alternate drive and my memory stick, then delete from the game. This generally happens when I start to feel like my neighborhood has too many sims and I don't want to neglect any of them but I really only like three or four, or if I get too attached to the tester sims I play while I'm waiting for hacks to be updated, or if I just want to play with terrain creation again.

I generally only use the Eaxis 'hoods for testing or challenges, but otherwise ignore or delete them.  And then I create a new 'hood, play it for a while, and generally abandon it when a new EP comes out and start another one, though I back up all neighborhoods pre-update.

But I do extract sims I become very fond of and turn them into saved sims, custom N001 template townies, or default facial template replacements.

So far, only once. I started with some interesting characters as adults. I backed up that hood and am currently playing a hood where those characters are 'born' (I use SimPE to clone them ingame before I left ye olde hoode and reintroduce them as toddlers. I created their parents by using their faces as templates and messing with the silders a bit). That way, I can see that particular generation grow up before I go rushing off into the distant future.

EAxis Hoods? I opened one accidentally before I knew I could delete them all. Out of curiosity, I loaded the Goth house-- (because I remember my Sim living with them in the console Sims: Bustin' Out) and was unimpressed.

Other than that, I have my MATY hood and a testing hood, and that's it.

Wow, you guys. I've been playing for 2 or 3 years, and I've never, ever rebooted. I'm on a fourth gen with several family lines, and just looking at the complicated family tree... which is HUGE... brings me inexplicable joy. Everyone is vaguely related somehow, because the nearest thing I had for founder couple had 6 kids. Another founding couple had 2 kids, but the male sim had a mistress by the side that gave birth to twins, and then... well, I'm telling you, the family tree is HUGE. When lacking proper mates, they've been known to marry townie or Maxoid sims. The Goth and Dreamer families live on in my game, but I killed the Pleasant twins because they didn't pass the prettiness test when they grew up. Haven't had much use to other Maxoid sims. I believe I killed the Caliente sisters early on.

Same here.  I got TS2 and NL back in late 2005, made Pleasantview my main hood, and have been playing it ever since.  It's somewhere in its fifth generation now. Only hood I've ever rebuilt from the start was Strangetown -- I use that as my test hood for new EPs, etc, and really fouled it up at one point. I made one custom hood but rarely play it, and never play Veronaville. I'm getting fond of the Desiderata hood that came with FT though, and have been playing that one quite a bit as a break from PV.

I've only completely redone all the Maxis neighborhoods 3 times, the first 2 times due to technical difficulties and the last time just because I was bored and wanted a fresh start for FT.  I try to save my custom neighborhoods, though it seems that those are more often fubar'd than the regular Maxis ones by the time I get done with them. 

I start a new hood far too regularly and I never delete a hood, even if I don't like the way it was turning out.

Consequently, I have a huge number of old neighborhoods packed into my spare hard drive. Some of them are copies of the same hood, backed up by SimPE and in varying stages of growth; some are neighborhoods I backed up prior to installing a new EP; some are variations on Pleasantview & Strangetown. But not one of them has managed to get to the 3rd generation or to have a lasting relationship with vampires, werewolves or bigfoots.

But, my two main hoods are my first Pleasantview and my 2nd "Experimental".

I move the neighborhoods I am not planning to play into a separate folder named, "EA spare neighborhoods" so I don't have to page through to get to the hood I want to play.

Does anyone ever play Veronaville? I've always stuck around Pleasantville, but most of my time is spent on its Downtown lot and Bluewater subhoods (Bluewater is getting a lot of play lately). I also added its university and all three vacation lots. No need to ever leave Pleasantville, really, but I first started playing on Strangetown, so I occasionally visit as well.

I just started on the fifth generation in my custom 'hood - which I started just after NL came out. So I guess... never?

I haven't played the original 'hoods since 2004. I played the Tests (custom) through the beginning of the third generation in Pleasantview, but after Chuck died I had issues letting elders happen for awhile, and flitted for a bit before trashing all EAxis 'hoods.

My longest family line was 11 generations in Urban Paradise. That terrain was out of control. I was doing some Alphabet-Apocalypse-whatever hybrid and only following the heir line. Other than that, I've gotten to generation 4 twice prosperity-style, currently on generation 5 in Teardrop Isle.

EXACTLY! Me too. I wander off after a while into an EP and then push the oldies off a cliff. I have one sim that I keep from first playing in 2004, because she was the first one born in game and I just liked her so much. Sometimes I put her in, and sometimes I don't.

I do like a populated neighborhood, though, and I am lazy, so I dread the point when I have to take all the sims in the bin and chuck them into houses. I am impatient.

I had the same neighborhood going for three years. Imagine my heartbreak when I FUBAR'd it! :(

A big draw of the Sims for me is the genetics. I love to watch families grow and genes get passed down, so, I started the neighborhood I have now about a year ago(?) and I've been playing it ever since.

I would say never but it's not quite true.  I have been playing the same neighbourhood since the game came out (Sept 2004) but when the empty templates first became available. I remade the hood with the same custom terrain I'd made in SC4 (tidied up a bit and made smaller) and completely empty.  I then cloned all my old sims into the new Little Carping and rebuilt everything - relationships, memories etc and used copies of the lots and so on.  Much better now.  No Goopy.  God, I hate Maxis sims - I opened Pleasantview and Strangetown when the game first came out and that's it.  The only Maxis sims I ever liked were the Curious brothers and Nervous, Loki and Circe so their clones moved into Little Carping.  I have a second hood I play sometimes called Rummilly which is my medieval/fantasy hood but that somehow doesn't hold my attention like Little Carping does.  The family stories in LC are so complex now even though I play V-E-R-Y s-l-o-w-l-y.

 I've reset Pleasantview (the only hood I play) so often I've lost count. I tend to lose interest in the game, uninstall it, then get back to it after a couple of months and reinstall.

Every time I play Pleasantview I tend to take a different route than I did the last time. Cassandra has been married to Don, to Dirk Dreamer, to some random townie and has remained a spinster... I like playing out different scenarios :)

When TS2 first came out, I sort of re-created my favourite TS1 polyarmory family in TS2, but quickly lost interest due to the telepathic Woohoo Sense. (That's before I found out about no-jealousy hacks.) That 'hood went down when I lost the entire backup. I eventually scrapped my second 'hood too, in which I committed all kinds of mortal BVTVFSes including binning occupied lots and putting in another 'hood.
I'm on my third 'hood that was going on since Seasons, the first time I ever used clean templates and also the first time that I ever reached over Gen 4 in any given 'hood. I tend to play several 'hoods in rotation, so it takes me quite a long time to reach the next generation.

I've never played any Maxis hoods.  I've had three custom hoods in my TS2 playing experience.  The first hood lasted about a year, six generations, and then it got too big and I got bored with it. 

My second hood I built on a terrain I didn't like (before I knew about terrain surgery and all that), and that lasted a year before I scrapped it.  I cloned my favorite characters though, and moved them to my current hood, which I've been playing over two years now, and am on the fourth generation (sixth if you count that the clones were third generation from the previous hood).

I'm quite attached to my Simmies and their little dramas. 

I guess I reboot rarely for actual game play. The first six months or so that I played, I played Pleasantview and Veronaville heavily. Then the new merged 'hood tute came out, which then occupied my game for about a year before it crashed and burned. So then I decided to create a custom one, which is very loosely based on the Royal Kingdom Challenge. I've been playing it for 1.5 years now, and I'm very attached to the families. I have no intention to abandon it in the foreseeable future. My only other 'hood is one to house all my lots (Eaxis/mine/downloaded), which I prefer over keeping them in the lot bin.

I have occasionally started new neighborhoods with the intention of playing other challenges, but they never last and I always delete them. If the challenge takes more than a few days for me to complete, I get bored and want to get back to my regular 'hood.

Now I only play the Eaxis neighborhoods when I need to test something, or when a new expansion comes out and I'm waiting for updated hacks/bug squashing. They're in a separate 'The Sims 2' folder so I only load them when they're needed. I try to protect my precious sims from the potential destruction inherent in new EPs. :)

I tend to play the Eaxis hoods quite often, and only use the premade sims in those hoods (there's enough crap in there already without me going in and CASsing the place up). It's quite nteresting this way. I only ever restart those hoods if absolutely necessary. I tend to do some things differently, like Cassandra married Don one time, but the other time she got left at the altar and married Darren.

I have a "Legacy" hood, the Riverside one. It's probably fucked to pieces internally, but oh well, it's really entertaining. I also have my main custom hood, Vinewood, which I am always starting again, because I usually hate the terrain and can't seem to make one I really like. I also have some test hoods.

I am often more attached to the neighbourhood than the actual sims in it.  If I get bored with a sim or family, I townify them.  If I want them back, I can recall them to playable status.  I never delete a hood (except my very first BFBVFS).  All my hoods are custom, with custom downtowns - I get a little invested in their design and it hurts to lose them.

Hee, me too. I like to say that I like the variety of scenarios, but I think I am just afraid of commitment. I would not want to be in Solowren's boat and lose three years' worth. Plus I just can't keep track. Sometimes I come back months later and look at their memories and I am like, you poor, poor, thing I can't believe that happened to you. Oh, wait. That was me. Then I reinstall over the top and start torturing them again.

I think I still have all the hoods I made, though I deleted all the Maxis hoods except Strangetown, which I only visit occasionally.  I'll build a hood and then lose interest and go build a new one.  Mainly these days I just use one of the old hoods to test my custom stuff.

My main problem (other than changing fandoms occasionally and wanting new Sims of the characters) is that when I put all the work into building a hood and its Sims just the way I want them, I don't want to mess it all up by playing it!  Also, I want my game to be just so before I try to do anything with it, or I get all annoyed and have to stop to fix something, and I still haven't run out of stuff to fix.  :p  One of these days (maybe after AL and all the necessary mods for it have come out, or when the masses start migrating to TS3 and the supply of new custom content starts to wane) I'll actually sit down and PLAY one of my hoods.

Same for me. I like to see who new kids turn out and it's a nice surprise when you get a sim who inherits something recessive for a change. I have been playing Riverblossom Hills only pretty much, since BV first came out which was about a year ago I think.

Wow, gotta say I'm surprised about how this turned out :)

I suspect after this last expansion pack I'll keep my Sims going and not start over each time. I just hate having Sims that exist that didn't "grow up" without the features added to an expansion pack. :)

I don't. Mind you, I don't play the original maxis hoods much. I set up my own hood to play as I like without any of those Maxis Fuggo Townies. What's sad is that I found it more fun setting the hood up than actually playing it.  :-\

But when I read the thread title, I thought it was going to be along the lines of 'how often do you reboot your computer'. :D

I thought that, too. And I was ready with this whole thing about how DH thinks you have to reboot every day but I only reboot if the system is acting wonky or slow and that can take days and days. Also I had a bit about how when I had Vista I had to reboot several times a day and it was one of the main motivators for my upgrading back to XP.

But this thread isn't about that. So I didn't want to say.

I turn off everyday (at night) - saves power in expensive GB.  Also, the computer never 'goes wonky'.

I also turn my computer off at night. Not only does it eliminate the temptation to surf the net all the time, the computer itself only misbehaves when it's life is in danger, not for shit and giggles as Windoze is prone to do.

I generally stick to challenges and make up my own rules that don't conflict with my play style to go with them (but having the goal keeps me interested and playing all my families instead of skipping the not-so-amusing ones or I end up with one family where the 2nd gen and 6th gen are both alive and married and equal aged... to brothers). When I get bored of the challenge or finish it, I wipe out the neighborhood. Or send it to a back-up location and then wipe it out.

Turning off your computer wastes Internets. Don't waste the Internets!

Usually I delete every time I load up Sims 2 and wonder what I was doing. This can be rather frequent as some days I don't remember that I just loaded the sims.

Currently- I just made a huge ruleset to replicate Dune as best I can. Something about the Bene Gesserits always sends me screaming to the sims to breed monsters.

I've never rebooted my primary neighborhood, Pleasantview. Closest I came was misplacing my backup when switching computers, which resulted in losing a week's play.

I'd be very miffed if I had to start over. There are so many interdependent business lots in my neighborhood  that recinstructing them would be extremely  tedious. I don't really play with the Pleasantview premades though. They're more Scenery Sims than anything else.

I rebooted the base 'hoods (P'view, Strangetown, V'ville) exactly once. I've got a few custom 'hoods I play in, plus Desiderata Valley. My primary 'hood, Pirate Island, is almost 2 years old and is on generation 7, which already has 25 members and is only just getting started. I've only had to revert to a backup once, due to an incredibly idiotic mistake on my part.

Once I get to ten generations, though, I'm extracting any sims I really like and then starting over, unless my 'hood explodes before that. It's started giving me a few warning signs, so I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

I think the longest I've kept playing a hood is until a second generation started to go to college. I have no attention span whatsoever.  :-\

My MATY hood has about 13 playable houses, making it impossible to advance generations in any realistic timeframe.  It is inconceivable that there will be 10 generations of this hood.

Funny, Teardrop Isle is now at 13 houses, and I can't bring myself to play it now.

Heh -- I ran a census last night, and my Pleasantview has 173 playables.  Probably spread over 45 - 50 houses/dorms. I play each one for one sim day (or a bit more if a birth is due), so it's taken two+ years to get to this point and Gen-5. Since I normally average playing two or three hours a night, it takes about a week to cycle through the whole hood now.

2-3 hours a night.  Bloody luxury!

No kids, nothing good on TV, and the wife goes to bed early... :)

*Emma giggles

If one of us goes to bed early, the other usually follows straight after! I get my playing time when the baby is in bed and husband is at work.

My wife used to go to bed early, but in summer she doesn't have much work, so she tends to be up later, and gaming is apparently "antisocial".  Go figure.  ::)

Well, dh used to complain about my attention being on my computer instead of whatever TV show he wanted me to watch with him. So I found him some video games he liked better than TV. Now he plays his video games while I play mine and peace has been restored.

It took a long time to find just the right video game for him, too. So, don't give up. I am sure there must be a video game for everyone.

Same here, at about 28 households and 2 sim-days each, it takes me a little over a month to get through a round.  (playing during rugrat naptime, or if hubby brings home work at night)  I'm beginning to realize that means if I play another year, I'll see maybe one more generation grow up.  I'm okay with that though - I'm playing more for the stories than the spawning at this point.

You can also lure your male into wonderful world of gaming with asking for a little help with difficult bits. Triple benefit: he gets to demonstrate his madskillz AND gets exposed to some gaming, and I get my RPG or quest cleaned from some moronic car race mini game.  ;D

As for the topic - the same Veronaville since first day years and years ago. It saw a lot of idiocy and cruel experiments from me but survived, for what I am deeply grateful and will stick to it to the end.

Mralways is too much of a 'sharer' for that. He calls me in to watch things on TV, or look at internet things, or see a thing he's seeing fifty times a day.

Easier to just stay in the same room when he's awake.

I only use the university neighborhoods as a start, and when the sims leave college they go in an empty custom neighborhood. So I never have to reset.
I changed the original N001 to N003 in program files fodler so I don't need to reset, the townies and NPC are my own custom made each time I create a new NB

That is exactly how DH is. But I found this wonderful game for him that is just too complicated for me and he feels all special and interesting because he excels at that game and I have no interest understanding. And whenever he tries to call me over to see this amazing thing that happened in his game I retaliate reciprocate by making him come over and look at the adorable things my sims are doing. Then he toddles back to his very-interesting-and-ever-so-very-complicated-and-way-over-my-head game.

His game?

World of Warcraft.    8)

I just did that today   ;)   ;D

Usually whenever I get bored of whats going on or if things arent going to plan in my game, or if I cant locate a hack that is bugging my game, I just deleted the downloads folder today as well, cause I didnt feel like sourcing through it and I do have a compressed backup of it.  So I will extract only the things I know that work.

I restart regularly it seems, no matter what I try to keep my interest.

I have restarted with new hard drives, graphics cards, too much custom content that I lost track of, just got bored, etc etc.

I seem to have lost interest in my current hood ever since I realised the release of AL was imminent.  ::) I usually make a vanilla sims 2 folder and check out the new hood with no hacks or CC.

I suspect my current hood is doomed but I'll pretend it's not, for a few weeks yet.

See, just the opposite for me.  I have been so involved in my current 2 hoods that I forgot all about the release date for AL.  Now I come back from a few days away and find that it's on the torrent sites.  I'll hopefully just add AL to Matysdoorp and keep going.

The only times I've 'rebooted' a hood:

1)  I used to have several custom themed neighbourhoods that required a lot of CC. I got sick of my game taking 20 minutes to load, so I trashed the hoods, and only kept some of the CC, mostly Victorian build items, because it's not unrealistic for a more traditional hood, such as Pleasantview or Riverblossom, to have a Victorian area or subhood. My game now loads in under five minutes, slightly longer if I delete groups.cache.

2)  I used to have the Megahood that combines the three original Maxis hoods, decided it was too big and unruly, and started over with clean templates of the individual hoods.

I go through phases when it comes to choosing which hood to play. I play Pleasantville for awhile, get bored with it, play Strangetown for awhile, get bored with it, play Riverblossom for awhile . . . you get the picture. I tend to get bored with any particular hood after a few weeks, so I've yet to make it through generation 3 in any hood, but I'm determined to stick it out this time, and stop deleting my hoods. The last hood I played in TS2 was my custom sci-fi/space themed hood (I caved and went on a DL spree but my game still loads in 5 minutes, nyah!), but lately I've been playing Castaway Stories. This has really made me appreciate my beloved TS2 mods, such as 'nowhatsthis' and 'paintcontinually' - I'm going crazy without them, crazy I tells ya'!

I played the same neighbourhood for three years before it inexplicably broke due to operator error and lack of backups. My legacy family is technically on Generation 23, which I started them in Dec 2004. Fortunately I had extracted my toddler Sim before that happened, for just such an emergency, and used him to create a new neighbourhood and a new legacy, but I still count it as an ongoing family story :D

I have additional neighbourhoods for different things, but my Legacy remains in the same one, and I"m backing up regularly now, so I don't lose everything again.

I've never restarted my neighborhoods and I've had the game since it came out. I loaded Pleasantview once when I got the game and messed around with Don and the Pleasants a bit but got the urge to create my own sims. I have no idea how but I ended up in Veronaville and i've been playing it ever since. All the playables that were there when the game shipped are still there untouched as I went on with my own families, except just recently I went to play the Monty household because the Gypsy gave one of my sims the teen guy that lives there as a date (I can't think of his name.) I also went to play the Capp household the other day because frankly i'm fed up with seeing consort in my sims home business, he needs to die. I haven't ever loaded Strangetown, the desert look isn't my thing. I made my own custom neighborhood and never bothered to play it and I deleted it when I installed BV for sake of disk space.

I've lost two neighborhoods...1st one was to a nasty Maxis glitch...in the time before I knew about this place.

Second one was to a nasty Maxis glitch...I think I was coming here, but couldn't save it in spite of that - it happened when I installed Seasons.

So I've got a custom neighborhood that I started with 16 college students (8 in each of 2 dorms) back when I first installed Seasons...some of the families are 3rd and 4th generation now...and I'm reluctant to play until I know it's safe.

So I started another little custom 'hood when I installed AL - not sure if I'll keep it going, or not...it's a lot of work...especially since i'll probably stop playing once Sims3 debuts...

I admire those of you with the long legacy histories, since I'm exactly the opposite.  I reboot very often, partly to avoid VBTs from happening, and partly because I seem to tire of each new EP within about a month or two.  And I don't want to keep adding all the EPs on top of each other, since the load times on my computer get out of control very quickly.  It also is kind of a point of pride of mine to run as "lean" a TS2 system as possible.  I have also needed the process to decide what I like and don't like about each EP, and thus which EPs I can live without.

I ran base+UNI+FT for a few months at least, which is very long for me.  I cannot live without UNI because I need the career reward to dock with the InSimenator so that I can beautify all the ugly townies.  I stopped using NL because the only things I used were the cars, the Pleasure aspiration, and the sectional sofas.  Cars are back with FT (of the you-restore-them variety), the Romance aspiration often seems to be an acceptable substitute for Pleasure, and sectional sofas are back with AL.  OFB was fun for a while, as was BV, but both got repetitive -- and when I learned that Sims cannot buy hotels (perhaps I was doing it wrong?), I lost interest in both.  I don't think I need to mention Pets around here.  SNS was really cool except for having to monitor Sim temperatures, and avoiding them getting hit by lightning.  Thus SNS didn't seem to mesh well with BV (how many "hotelies" need to get hit by lightning while in the hot spring, until someone realizes someone is doing something wrong?), and from what I hear, may not mesh well with AL either.

I think the secondary aspiration element in FT is really interesting, but the hobbies are otherwise beginning to get annoying.  Also my AL roomies are constantly hogging the FT exercise bike.  So I'm about to uninstall FT and go to base+UNI+AL, and then once I get that working, add the two stuff packs I just bought (TSS and K&BS).  I have the feeling I'm about to get to know Lord Darcy's work in this area.

I am aware that I'm weird and probably phail, but what the heck, in the end it's only a game.  And one good thing about rebooting and trying simpler setups is that AwesomeSpec doesn't have nearly as many requirements with fewer EPs installed.  Though I will admit I once installed Pets for a brief time just to try out the fences AwesomeSpec calls for, to prevent strays from digging up the yard.  It was very satisfying.  :)