I love the thought of actually making it to the second generation of a hood. The only time I've ever done it was the very first hood I ever made in summer 2013. I created Shaylene and 4 children for her (I'd never played child or teen sims, and didn't know how to get a sim pregnant - but I learned quickly). Her oldest two children grew to adulthood in my then barely-modded game...fast forward.

I now play with clean templates, and so many mods I have to check which ones I have before installing new ones. I've even modded ACR to go with the custom lifespan I've created (I've learned very quickly indeed...).

My problem is that I get overwhelmed. I start to hate how my cc is organized, and want to clean it up for faster performance, which is valid, but then I inevitably delete a bunch of things that I really wanted, decide the hood is too full of stupid custom sims that I don't want to play, relegate one hood as a test hood, then fall in love with it, then decide there's too many wonky experiments running around and I need to cleanse it, then get frustrated by my own lack of civic organization in all of my hoods, then read something about building that I desperately want to try in a clean hood, and delete everything and start over.

In the current iteration of Shaylene (who will forever be one of my all time favourite sim characters to play) I have just moved her, her sister, and her mum into a house as half of the 6 custom playables that will start off this hood. <sigh>

I am DETERMINED to see this one through past Generation 1.

We'll see how long I last.

Terula, may I suggest that when you get tired of a hood, instead of deleting it, you leave it lying there? Then it'll be available to play again when you get tired of the next hood. There's nothing wrong with bouncing from hood to hood and back again. You may find that your mistake has been in trying to play only in one place, that hood-bouncing is your natural playstyle.

I won't call myself a veteran even if I've been playing the game since 2004.

I'm a long term player. My long lasted hoods started as Build a City Challenge (BACC). My first one, Paray-Roches-Noires, started in 2008. I stopped playing it in 2011 since at the time I was feeling overwhelmed by the number of sims and households. I still have it but I'm not sure I'll go back.
The current one also started as a BACC in 2011. Due to computer issues I didn't play between 2013 and 2014. Founders descendants currently are on generation 5-6 (maybe 7). TBH I don't use spreadsheets. I just keep a list with names and age of my sims. I know who is who in my hood and I'm always eager to see what my sims are up to. Plus I'm reluctant to start another hood.

My current hood has been my most long-lasting. The first generation born in-game are now elders. I do have a spreadsheet though I haven't updated it in awhile, but I find record-keeping is very handy to maintain a long-lasting hood, especially with many playable sims running around. I'm not tired of the neighborhood yet because it's like tending a garden and the community is still active and there's new stuff to find all the time and it makes me wonder how to incorporate it. I know that someday it will crash and burn since it's so old and definitely has corruption that I keep at bay with mods.

The longest I've played a hood was my original Pleasantview. That one lasted past three and a half years (2006 - 2010 or so), and I was so, so clueless. I deleted at least a dozen user-made Sims from the Sim Bin. I selected and played Mrs. C, and thanks to a romance mod, Mrs C. would often pursue my male Sims with great ardor. (Sorry, guys.) My files were not read-only. I didn't make back-ups. Yup. Lots of bad things.

I do need to insert a comment here, though, for the benefit of newer players. When my daughter did VBTs, her hood lasted for two weeks. So do NOT do VBTs that you know of. While many hoods last for a while, many do not when you do VBTs.

Lecture time over.

My hoods don't usually have a long life. Either I corrupt them, feel I've played them as far as I could anyway and don't feel like trying to fix the damage, say to myself "oh, bother" and start again; or I change OS and don't feel like moving hoods over. I know you can ... I just don't. And sometimes, for good reason. For instance, when I get a new OS in the future, and if I can still play Sims 2 (and I certainly hope I can!) I'll probably sort out the Hug Bug nonsense. Get that Boiling Oil mod at the get-go and start fresh. I've done stuff of that nature in the past ... thorough house-cleanings and problem-fixing.

Currently, my longest one is another Pleasantview, and that has been a little over a year. A year and a half perhaps. I would guess my average hood lasts about two to two and a half years now.

The very first hood I played* was Pleasantview, and it was a disaster. I did all the things you shouldn't, deleting sims, deleting graves, adding Grim and the carpool driver to a family, making them selectable, and such. Then I got bored with it and started my first custom hood, still having no idea what I was doing. One day, Pleasantview just randomly disappeared, months after I'd last played it.

* Elsewhere on MTS, I mentioned my "first neighborhood." That's actually Black Mesa, my first custom hood. (I'm a Half-Life fan. The first Sim I ever made was Gordon Freeman. He's shown up in every neighborhood I've made.) I just don't count Pleasantview amongst the hoods I've played, because I really had no clue what I was even doing. In Black Mesa, at least I vaguely understood that deleting sims = bad. It actually lasted quite a while, at least until I started coming across missing playables and headless Sims.

My longest neighborhood has been going on for about 3 years now. It's a very special neighborhood. All my playable sims are male. I'm a confessed yaoi fan girl, but this is the ONLY neighborhood I've put the work and time into. I just go bored with all the others.

I've slowly worked on Blue Point, creating storylines, new buildings, renovating old buildings, and making way so that it actually looks like a small town. It even has a hospital/clinic, city hall, and office building! I've worked on the neighborhood design (there is a small, growing slum for a growing criminal empire...) and a very rich area my mayor recently moved into.

I've been EXTREMELY careful with this neighborhood. If this place got corrupted, it would completely break my heart. I do have a problem that I only realized will crop up in a generation or two with Blue Point. I have a LOT of playable families (even my romance sims had babies... poor kids...). Most of those families have kids, so in a generation or two the town population will double. So I'm a glutton for punishment.

Lately, I've been playing Sedona though. There are so many story lines to play with! AND I FINALLY MADE AN ATTIC ON A HOUSE WITH FOUNDATIONS!!!! YES!!!

The neighborhood that lasted more for me was one in wich I made it till the childhood of the third generation. It was a custom one. It was great, I had so much fun, and I had a lot of sims on it. The problem was when I noticed that the game was consuming so much time of my life... so I decided to say goodbye to the game and deleted every carpet, and CC, and stopped playing... Till like 5 months later, when I started playing again, downloading cc again, and sad that I had lost such huge and funny neighborhood. I still regret doing that. Still, now I know that i'm here forever, even though i'm not playing the sims currently, I just know i'll fall for it eventually, so I have everything in a safe carpet. Ha, weird. "And remember, you're here foverer"

The one I'm on now is probably my longest running neighborhood - started in 2015 and currently on Gen 2/B and about to start Gen 3/C. Gen 0 are still alive thanks to my longer age mod, but they'll be dying off soon and Gen 1/A will be becoming elders. I tend to either have massive computer issues that requires me to restart (so far I'm good, knock on wood) or just get bored of doing the same thing...or of course, stopping playing for awhile and coming back with no idea where I left off! I'm really hoping to take this neighborhood through the whole 104 generations that is my goal.

My longest, consistently played, one is Veronaville with my own Sims. They're just reaching 10th generation now.

Mine has lasted since I began playing, 2 years ago, though, it was up in Newgrounds dumping grounds while my laptop was out for nearly a year, but I played on many computers, the file stills works perfectly, it's all neighborhoods, all I did was, NOT delete any NPC of any sort (Like The Grim Reaper, Hula Zombie, Rod Humble, ect...) All I can say is, Go through SimPE and list out all the object Sims (Global NPCs) and put their names in text documents if you want, or copy the text below, and if you added any to a family, or edited them in any way, you screwed up the game or neighborhood, and need to reinstall or reset the 'hood, so you would need to package up your lots, and hope you can fix things, It's best if you also pull your Downloads folder out of the directory in the C:\users\name\documents\EA Games\The Sims 2 (or Ultimate Collection if like me) (Users may also come up as OneDrive if you use Windows 10 as well) make backups to the directory itself quite a bit as well, just to be safe, put it on a file dump place, just to be safe. have a great day simmers.

(The Sims not to delete and stuff include, but before, the **WARNING** ((This part is copied from Wikipedia)) Do not attempt to add NPC Sim to a household, or try to turn them into a supernatural creature, such as a vampire or a werewolf. As Sim is a global NPC (meaning they are the same in all neighborhoods) doing so can cause game corruption, fixed only by uninstalling and re-installing the game. The list of the NPCs not to mess with: Grim Reaper, Hula Zombies, Rod Humble, Therapist, Bigfoot Bigfoot (Known to cause issues badly, Three lakes is safe bet) Wise Old Man, The Witch Doctor, Pirate Captain Edward Dregg, Santa Claus (Or Santa Klaus) Father Time or Toddler New Year, Pollination Technician or Birth Queens, Ideal Plantsims, Genies, Social Worker (The Gypsy Matchmaker may try making her a blind date, if so, reload the file, because her character file is not complete) human Statues, Break Dancers, Mrs. Crumplebottom (As tempting as it is to delete her doe -_-) Skunks, Penguins, Unsavory Charlatan (Now some of these may just mess up the neighborhood, but on the safe side, please, DON'T EDIT THESE DATA FILES)

I've used the same story 'hood since 2008 (possibly 2007), if that counts. I don't play generations there, though.

I had one back when I first started playing that lasted for probably 5-6 generations, but I stopped using it after installing some new EPs.

Oakbrook has been running since January 2016. This means it's two and a half years old.

I still haven't gotten through the first rotation.

Sorry to bump this thread.

If you don't mind me bumping behind you, that last iteration of Shaylene was deleted like four versions of that hood ago, but I've been playing Strangetown (Loste) for a solid two months now... -_- Maxis hoods move a lot faster for me since there are pre-established families, but when I build a custom hood I always prefer to create 6 sims or so and just see what happens to them all + townies. I have resolved not to delete hoods anymore, but I also haven't restarted Holling yet. I think I'll play a few more maxis hoods and see if I can get better at establishing things before I strike out and do a custom one again.

My Beginning of Pleasantview (+Beginning of Bluewater Village) Neighbourhood is one year old this month and the two oldest families (Goth and Crumplebottom) are in their 4th generation. Since like April the rotations are really slow due to RL and the amount of families.

I managed to play around 6-7 generations in a year with the Desiderata Valley Neighborhood. Ages weren't synced at all, everyone was somehow related to each other in the end & I still have Neighborhood folder but lost the Subhood folders that I had attached which is why I can't re-visit my hard-work.. Plus, I accidentally removed Custom Food from my Downloads and forgot about their memories etc. Silly me. Now I'm playing an Uber/Megahood - ROUND ONE!

I once bulked up Pleasantview with so many families I made, due to being bored days after I made a family, so I'd just keep making them, I did add a few decorations to it here and there, I also had a family that almost over ruled the neighborhood, but before they could, my hard drive died sadly, but after all, I'll be sticking to a cleaner neighborhood now, where I don't keep making new families every 15 (real) minutes.