How often do you 'reboot'?

[jolrei]

I seem to have lost interest in my current hood ever since I realised the release of AL was imminent. 

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.

[notveryawesome]

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'!

[sarianastar]

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

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.

[Chain_Reaction]

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.

[sewinglady]

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...

[jwaas]

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.