I have Simpotence

[Motoki]

I just can't get the desire to play the game lately. I think about it, I sort of want to sometimes, but I just can't do it. It's not working for me right now. I'm bored to tears with it, I feel like it's the same tedium humdrum treadmill and I'm also sick to death of them bitching. The latter I had fixed with hacks until NL came along. 

The sick part is, I still download crap for the game and haven't played it except to test files for weeks, but I can't stop looking for stop and downloading because I worry I'll miss something nice that I might want to use when I might feel like playing the game again at some hypothetical future point in time.

I also can't stop coming here. I'm so bored sometimes I hit reload lol. And I check this place at work too. But why do I want to hang out somewhere for a game I have no interest in playing? The game just feels like bland milktoast for me right now. I find it far more interesting to read about the outrageous thing of the day that Rentech has done.

There, that's my confession. 

[MokeyHokey]

Aww.  I get like that sometimes too, and turn to MW (which I'm not even halfway through!  ) or something and inevitably I wind up coming back to the Sims.  I usually start with something different, like building community lots--which I hate--doing the college thing-which I hate--or just starting a new neighborhood entirely.  Mebbe that's why I can never get past gen 2 LOL.  I'm determined one of these days to actually do a challenge.  The idea of playing entirely hack free is daunting though.

The sick part is, I still download crap for the game and haven't played it except to test files for weeks, but I can't stop looking for stop and downloading because I worry I'll miss something nice that I might want to use when I might feel like playing the game again at some hypothetical future point in time.

I did that for Sims1 until University came out.  At that point, I figured I really really wasn't going to reinstall and play it ever again, and deleted it all. 

[rohina]

4 words: Play the email challenge.
Usually if I don't want to play sims it is because I am coming down with the flu. You could take a break and play Civ 4, or you can come over to my place and help me mark the 90 essays that are sitting on my desk.

[Oddysey]

I haven't played for at least a week. Homework and such. But I did have a four day weekend . . .

At any rate, whenever I get really bored with the game, I spend some time just torturing sims. Often I'll come up with some little story for it, too. Like a semi-demonic couple who went through a new incarnation every time they'd killed a certain number of sims. Coming up with creative ways to make electronic people miserable is something that I find breaks many a mental block.

E-mail challenge is good for this reason.

[mishymoto]

Feeling your pain, Motoki.  I just bought AOE3, and I'm not happy with it so I'm back to my Sims.  I created a really nasty family since I haven't played one before to see if that will peak my interest again or maybe I will try the e-mail challenege.  We'll see!

[Wolfee]

I had the same problem, I stopped playing for 5 months and only until recently when Nightlife came out did I return to the game. I too, had found myself constantly looking for downloads for the game but not playing it either. It got to the point where I finally noticed that since I hadn't played the game in over a month I might as well  remove the Sims game from my computer and go cold turkey on the downloads too. It was hard at first but I quickly started playing some other game and I temporaly forgot my "downloading" habit lol .


I haven't gotten bored with Nightlife  yet but I am getting frustrated with how buggy my game has become 
I love coming here and lurking though 
 

[aussieone]

I also can't stop coming here. I'm so bored sometimes I hit reload lol. And I check this place at work too. But why do I want to hang out somewhere for a game I have no interest in playing? The game just feels like bland milktoast for me right now. I find it far more interesting to read about the outrageous thing of the day that Rentech has done.

Oh Motoki.......

I know how you feel. Sometimes I get extremely bored with the 'groundhog day' like repetitiveness of playing. I have a MATY addiction too. I'm more of a lurker than a poster though, but still, the overwhelming desire to come back again and again is too hard to ignore. I'm also finding the ongoing Rentech saga more fun than loading up the game these days too!  

Also........oh...I've lost my train of thought......boredom..... creeping.....in *zzzzzz*  

[SaraMK]

Didn't Inge take care of the bitching with a new hack for NL? I was sure she did... check her site (for some reason it won't load for me right now).

[Motoki]

It only takes care of some of the bitching about needs, but the noroutefail doesn't seem to work, either Inge's or Pescado's. I'm not sure if there are any more sources of bitching besides routefail and low needs, but I definitely notice the difference between how I had it pre-NL and post NL.

I'm not sure about the email challenge thing. I mean people running around and peeing on the floor, I've had all that with my nannies. 

[greeneyedsims]

Whenever I've gotten bored with the game, I always come here and read the Podium, because it never fails...I will find some kind of fascinating thread that will kickstart me back into wanting to load my game up! 

[MissDoh]

Oh I know exactly how you feel, it seems for the last months all I did was doing test and preparing my neighborhoods for Nightlife, unfortunately (or hopefully) I have a back-up that I keep putting back for some odd reason. 

I redesigned my Sim houses, downloaded a lot of starter houses which I rearrange, redesign downtown and University lots but did not really played with my Sims.  It seems I don't know what to do with them anymore.

I created 7 families and decided they all had to find the perfect match right away and all needed to be pregnant now!  I don't really like having babies in my game (well not that many) and to my absolute dismay I ended up with 3 set of twins out of the 7 pregnancies, I never added so many twins at once, it was too much for me I add to put my back-up back in which all my lots are not the way I like, so back to redesigning I am.... an eternal loop right now...

I used to spend a lot of time on the Sims 2 website at work and back home but lately I prefer to hang in here mostly because you guys rocks and know what you are talking about and I learned a lot here (yes yes, I changed my mind on many things, mea culpa I was a sheep before).

I never really tried doing some challenges since I do play a little like some challenges anyhow and never was really into cheating in my game.  Maybe I could give it a shot and see.  I am bored with my Sims and would love to give them nice adventures but raising generations of families do not appeal to me, maybe a romance challenge would be more appealing... and of course the holiday pack will defenitely not solve that problem lol.

[Brynne]

I'm not bored with NL, yet, but you've seen how crazy my sims are! I throw everything at 'em. I think I would be bored if I played the way the game was meant to be played, though, and just created generation after generation of sims, letting the older ones die off, etc. But since I have just the one family being the center of my game, I've gotten attached to them and they've become well-fleshed-out characters. Of course, that also requires a lot of imagination, on my part. I ignore the "why the game does what it does" aspect. I find it disturbing to think that my "wonderful parents" are only succumbing to the advertisements of their babies and usually trying to fulfill their own needs in taking care of the baby. Or something like that. I hear those explanations and do the fingers-in-the-ear thing, "Na na na na na..." Bleah.

[theisz]

I've become a genetic junky and I can't control myself.  I like to create certain genetics and then mate them with townies or others I have created just to see wheat they will end up looking like. I'll have the same couple have a bazillion kids to see if I get repeats and I try to use unique looking folks to mix and match.  I do this over and over….

And yeah, hi, my names theisz and I am a genetic junky. 

[KellyQ]

I just can't get the desire to play the game lately. I think about it, I sort of want to sometimes, but I just can't do it. It's not working for me right now. I'm bored to tears with it, I feel like it's the same tedium humdrum treadmill and I'm also sick to death of them bitching. The latter I had fixed with hacks until NL came along. 

The sick part is, I still download crap for the game and haven't played it except to test files for weeks, but I can't stop looking for stop and downloading because I worry I'll miss something nice that I might want to use when I might feel like playing the game again at some hypothetical future point in time.

I also can't stop coming here. I'm so bored sometimes I hit reload lol. And I check this place at work too. But why do I want to hang out somewhere for a game I have no interest in playing? The game just feels like bland milktoast for me right now. I find it far more interesting to read about the outrageous thing of the day that Rentech has done.

There, that's my confession. 

Well there, you've just described me in a nutshell. I have been doing the same exact thing and wondering if there is something wrong with me, lol. I spend an ungodly amount of time reading MATY during the day while I'm at work (winter is an extremely slow time of year in my office) and when I'm at home and finally get some computer time after dinner,dishes, kids, etc., I find myself downloading stuff, searching for more stuff, reorganizing downloads and have about zero desire to actually play the game I'm doing all this downloading for! And now, as you can see, instead of searching for downloads or playing the game, I'm back here at MATY . I read Ancient Sim and Brynne's posts and think I really must be lacking in the imagination department because their games sound like so much fun and mine at the moment are like, "meh".

[gali]

Motoki and other quitters -

It only proves the EA thesis to issue an EP each 3 months.... After 3 months play, the simmers get bored, and want something new....

It can point too to the high inteligence of the simmers: "OK, I've  got it - what's new?"...

[Brynne]

Heeeeey, I'm smart...

[Zeljka]

I have gone through many such stages so I know exactly how you feel. The downloading is an attempt to try to find a reason to go back in. If you found something really cool, you may want to go back in and play more, but it doesn't usually happen until you have thousands of new things, most of which you'll have forgotten by the time you go back in to play...

That's why I still don't have the EPs installed, though I've had them since mid-September.
I've been trying to go through all my neighbourhoods, make sure everyone's at home, no visitors or npc's etc... and it's getting so boring. My neighbourhood's are so big (over 100 lots combined and probably 1,000s of playable sims) and I have so many backups of the first one that I've been going through versions to see which I want to keep (they're all screwed, I should just toast them all, but it was my first and there are a few families I really like)
I'm starting to think I'll just keep the few families I really can't do without, teleport everyone else over and turn them into townies, then delete their lots. Thanks to the no townie regen the neighbourhood only has 5 natural townies left, so it could work right?

[Inge]

I don't think I could maintain my interest in The Sims unless I was also creating stuff for it.   And I can't play for longer than about an hour an evening because my computer gets really noisy when I have the sims loaded and I end up with a headache.

Having said that I usually find that when I am reluctant to start the game up for days or weeks at a time it's usually because I am playing in a way that doesn't suit me.  Like trying to age all the families at the same rate and playing each house a day at a time.  I found I wasn't getting really involved with any family and so I didn't care how they got on or want to go back to check on them.   Currently I am trying with aging off, and sticking with one home and family while they play out a particular scenario or story.   I also just leave some by the wayside if I am not finding them interesting.   When their siblings get old, I can just delete them if they weren't interesting enough to keep in the family tree.

[skandelouslala]

I go through phases where I don't play for a week or so...sometimes longer..b/c I get bored.  Then I come back to it and it feels more refreshing.


Right now I am on a kick though.  I recreated myself and my fiance quite accurately to the point where it is slightly creepy lol..so making us reproduce and then seeing my 'spawn' grow up has been entertaining me lol

[aussieone]

I 'recreated' myself once and got 'married' to a 'famous' Sim I have a crush on and created. It was a lovely fantasy *sigh* 

[DrBeast]

Must be the time of the year I guess. Truth is, I became less and less interested in the game over the past couple of weeks, but I still joined MATY to check out the threads and post an occasional reply. Since last week though I've completely abandoned the game. A friend of mine brought over his PS2 to show San Andreas to my girlfriend and the next day I got the PC version. Guess what. She played once or twice, then I took over the computer...again! Bye bye sims, welcome CJ. It's not the first time I abandon TS2 for another game either. First time was before Uni, when Sid Meier's Pirates! hit the shelves. I got it, even joined a forum for the game, played my socks off, and a couple of months later I got Uni. All the hacks were Uni compatible by that time (it had been out for some time), so I completely soaked it in. Until last week. I still haven't gotten NL (for reasons I've stated elsewhere), so maybe in a month or two (after I've squeaked the bejesus out of San Andreas that is) I'll get started with the game again. I still join MATY though, and I still join the forum for Pirates (it's called hookedonpirates btw, former Cutlass Isle), and the reason is I enjoy it. I like Cutlass Isle because of the completely flame-free environment and the laughs I get from many guys over there, whereas MATY is more of a learning-in-progress-along-with-a-few-laughs-and-mishaps kind of place. Oh, and it's got some pretty handy hacks to boot!

[AnastasiaRenai]

I used to get really bored with the sims.   Until I started playing it while doing my school work.  Result, I last longer doing my school work and don't get bored of the sims, because when they are doing something I absolutely don't care about, I ignore them, until some major event occurs that interests me.  (The only bad thing about this is that I had to stop bringing my laptop to class, because I was always trying to play it in class.)  The bulk of my downloading now is focused on hacks that make my sims smarter and more independent, so I can ignore them more.   I guess you could say I want to play them like SimCity when you could build it so that the city was making money, then leave it overnight to discover you have a gazillion dollars the next morning. 

[Motoki]

Well I guess I just have no imagination sometimes. Either that or I get tired of just making everything up in my head.

I wish there were stories and mini-scenarios. Sort of like how the default neighborhoods were setup except that it would actually let you play out to some sort of conclusion or goal where the outcome actually gets resolved one way or another. I think some other people must want this too because that's probably why so many people were fascinated with the so-called Bella mystery. People were looking for a story in a game where quite frankly it just wasn't there.

I do realize they intentionally did not follow up on those stories so the game would be open ended and we could choose our own paths, but I think it would be nice if there were some kind of way that us users could set up stories and scenarios and then maybe share them with each other.

Maybe I am just looking for roleplaying in a simulation game and looking in the wrong place, but I don't think games have to stick to one particular genre and I see some potential there for another way to keep the game fresh because there's only so many clothes and furniture you can download before you just feel like been there done that.

[Shupinola]

When I get fed up of TS2, it's usually because the bugs, annoyances and niggles are getting me down. I haven't bought many games recently, because everything looks the same. I borrowed Civ III ages ago and finally got around to buying my own copy because I sometimes go over to visit my mum and when she hits the soaps, she's gone for ages and her PC won't handle TS2. But Civ III is pretty boring. So I end up falling back on C&C (various versions). Last week I bought SSX On Tour for my PS2. It's good in the early stages, but I prefer racing to trick competitions and I currently have a screen full of trick missions and no new race options. But I love free-riding from the top of the mountain to the bottom. It's very relaxing and takes about 25 minutes to complete - longer if you find one of the hidden half-pipes and stay there practicing tricks. Then I go back to the top and do it again, this time taking a different route. It's pretty much no-brainer stuff, but sometimes that's all you need.

I know what you mean about the nastiness though. The new 'furious' feature is a complete pain in the arse and I have Sims that do nothing but fight. In one family, the two kids were forever fighting and then mum got pissed off with dad for being in the toilet when she wanted to go. It started with poking and ended up with them continually attacking each other. Even after I worked the relationships back up, one would still poke the other and the furious state would return and it would plunge into fighting again. I just couldn't cope with two pairs of Sims doing nothing but fighting and eventually the parents had to break up. But have you noticed that the reverse is just as annoying. Sims in Love now do nothing but kiss, cuddle and flirt and ignore all other needs? They don't eat, pee, bathe or sleep and then end up in a right state. Kids don't get fed and the threat of the social worker is always there. Send a Sim to serve a meal and they cancel the action and return to the kissing.

And is it just me, or when the game first came out, didn't Sims move around much more intelligently? If another Sim was using the stairs they also wanted to use, they just followed on behind them. Now they stamp their feet, whine, point around and then cancel all their actions and head off to kiss/fight their lover/partner/sibling. I'm almost at the point where I'm about to turn off free will and that's something I've never done with this game or the original Sims.

[Ancient Sim]

I have periods like this as well - in fact, I'm having one now.  I know exactly what you mean about needing storylines and I think maybe between us we can work on that.  I've been thinking maybe I should create a dysfunctional family, something along the line of the Pleasants, but up to now I've not been able to bring myself to do it. 

How about if a group of us get together and each come-up with a 'start-off' storyline - i.e., we each provide one family.  We could either choose for ourselves who the family consisted of, or use dice to roll the family members and their aspirations, signs, etc., rather like in a challenge.  Once we had our family we would set them up in a certain way, which could be anything we want from battling teens (a la the Pleasants) to a couple who are absolute opposites with nothing whatsoever in common.  Each of us would create a different type of family. Once we'd done that, we could either upload them in their houses to the official site and put them into our games (they'd have to be created in brand-new neighbourhoods to avoid any extra character files), upload just the characters individually, or simply describe the scenarios and re-create them with characters of our own choosing.  I'm more inclined to the first one myself so we'd all have the same families and lots (would make it easier to compare stories, I think), plus we'd get to see each other's Sims and compare them, maybe get some halfway-decent genetic mixes coming through as well.

If there were around half-a-dozen of us doing this, we could have a separate neighbourhood for it and play each family the same amount of time and see how differently (or the same) they develop for all of us.  Something like that anyway.

Not sure if this is a good idea or a crap one, but I'm just trying to think of ways to break the monotony.  I could do with a new EP every couple of months or so to be honest.  I think a lot of the problem is that once one comes out everyone is going on about the next one and you start thinking "Should I be fed-up of this one already, then?"  I wish they'd shut-up about the next one until nearer the time.

Oh and 10/10 for the word "Simpotence".  Wish I'd thought of it (grrrrr).