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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 29th Oct 2017 at 7:08 PM
Default No Story Progression: What will I lose?
Hello all! I'm a longtime Sims 2 player, who has recently acquired the Sims 3. I know that story progression is a feature, and I'm wondering what I would lose if I turned it off and just played the Sims 3 in a Sims 2-style way. (I'm a bit of a micromanager. I like surprises and stories, but I don't like them happening without me )
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Virtual gardener
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#2 Old 29th Oct 2017 at 7:27 PM
Basically, it would mean that townies/NPC's will stop having children, getting married, etc. Aging is not affected by it, and if I recall right the whole becoming a celebrity and supernatural either.
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#3 Old 29th Oct 2017 at 7:34 PM
If you play without story progression, sims won't move out, get married, have babies and get jobs and boy/girlfriends. I think they'd just age up and do the same thing every day.

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Scholar
#4 Old 29th Oct 2017 at 7:35 PM
many opportunities to be mad It's Random Progression, not the "Story" one

try nraas SP ( nraas.wikispaces.com ) or Pescado SP ( www.moreawesomethanyou.com ); both have theirs merits, depends of particular neeeds and vision of the game, customisation options, content etc. I'd vote personally for nraas, if not the content itself, than just for friendly and helpful community, contact with MATY's herd can be intimidating.


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Mad Poster
#5 Old 29th Oct 2017 at 7:44 PM
IMO you would be missing out on a major feature of the game. I would never play with it off. I play with the EA one and have been very happy with it. I have many Nraas mods for other things that are essential for a better performing game and to set some things as wanted.
Department of Post-Mortem Communications
#6 Old 29th Oct 2017 at 8:01 PM
I have played without any story progression whatsoever for years now and the only thing I feel I am missing out on is the screaming at the screen when story progression (regardless of which one) decided to do exactly what I didn't want.
I am now my own story progression.

I use AwesomeMod to retain inactives' wishes and for quick household switching; it also allows them to progress in their jobs without me and gather happiness points from being happy (full green bar)
Babies, marriages etc. I can either achieve that with MasterController or by switching to that household and play the scenario.
I give them their coworkers manually with MC and control role Sims with Register.
I also use several tuning mods to either enable or disable some autonomous actions and so I still end up sometimes with unexpected consequences.

After 8 years of playing The Sims 3 this has turned out for me to be the most satisfactory way - full control by playing the whole town.

ETA: I also have to confess that the older I get the more I appreciate a completely boring game. I sometimes wish that redecorating my Sims' houses would be animated (painting the walls in real time etc.) and I can very well imagine that then watching the paint dry can be a wholly fascinating thing.
Mad Poster
#7 Old 29th Oct 2017 at 8:40 PM
I can see where it might be appealing to play without any story progression at all if one is coming over from TS2 recently and/or one wants to play an entire town in rotations. That is, if you can keep the towns from becoming overpopulated or demographically out of balance to the point where the game itself thinks that some or all inactive households need to be removed entirely/culled from your game when you aren't looking.

I must have around 3,000 resident sims, not counting the homeless NPCs or animals, in my 16-world Traveler mod connected six year old ongoing game by now. This matches my style of play. If you think I have any intention of playing ALL of them in some kind of rotation that would take 100 years to work through one complete cycle, I would have to say I may be crazy but not that crazy! Within each of the five worlds where "my" sims actually live, I have anywhere from one to ten households that I rotate through each cycle.

NRaas StoryProgression, for those interested, allows us to separate the sims for whom we want to control progression by playing them ourselves in turns vs. "the rest of them" who can progress on their own all around ours. The management of such protective castes is admittedly not for everyone and newly arriving players may feel a little overwhelmed if they haven't experienced NRaas SP at all yet, but it's there to consider or at least read about.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Story+P...+Caste+Settings
Test Subject
Original Poster
#8 Old 29th Oct 2017 at 9:03 PM
Ah, I didn't realise that turning off Story Progression didn't turn off aging as well! Thank you, everyone!

I think I'll probably install the NRaas mod, and give it a try! (And I'll definitely look into the caste settings, too, igazor.)
Mad Poster
#9 Old 29th Oct 2017 at 11:12 PM
I play totally legacy style. Played one family 34 generations. So I want the rest of the town and kicked out family members to operate on their own. I moved one family member across the street and it was fun to watch as she married a vamp and had 2 vamp kids as I recall. My family would go visit them.
Top Secret Researcher
#10 Old 30th Oct 2017 at 3:05 AM
I use NRAAS SP. It was quite intimidating at first. It's liking going to the high school with Biff... you spend some time with your head in the toilet getting swishes. But you soon learn which hallways to use to avoid being Biffed.

For Example, you learn that to adjust the number of immigrants isn't under Immigration options, but General->Lots->immigration you've begun to know your way around. You learn the difference between Immigration pressure, and gauge. And "castes" aren't castes they're sets of people with a common characteristic. All aliens, all witches, all teenage and up fairies. You can do kewl things with it; like I have a setting for fairies who are teens and older so they stop aging, and fairies never get stinky and have to bathe. Depending upon the game I'm playing, all the immigrants are from France, Egypt or China.

I tried making it so Alien babies weren't green... that didn't work. I need to check my settings.
Instructor
#11 Old 30th Oct 2017 at 6:41 AM
I play my game with SP and aging off completely and act as my own story progression, aging Sims up when I'm done with their goals for each stage in life. I just hate it when Sims do things without me being there or telling them to. I remember I had a family I had put a lot of work into when I first started play Sims 3. Switched to another household for about 5 minutes and when I checked my, the daughter of my original family was moved out and now engaged to a vampire, the robot had moved out with the toddler and gotten a job, and the parents had quit their jobs and started a new one. So yeah, I wasn't too happy with EA at that moment. I use NRAAS SP when I know Im going to be playing just one family in a town, but if I'm playing with more than one, 0 SP and I micromanage everything else like babies and couples myself.
Mad Poster
#12 Old 31st Oct 2017 at 6:50 AM
I've been playing with almost the entire NRaas Mod collection which is about 113 files and have got awsomeMod installed to disable automated school assingments which are too buggy to allow as they cause overcrowding and routing fails in school rabbit holes.I also have my Mod settings tuned and confifures so heavily that I just end up being my own story progression for the most part in TS3 and am playing it TS2 style rotationally without getting upset at every unwanted change that used to happen before adding Mods ot my games.
Top Secret Researcher
#13 Old 3rd Nov 2017 at 6:34 AM
June 2009- I install newly released TS3
First week- I notice many families now have new and unexpected babies
Second week- Many babies vanish
Third week- I discover SP is to blame, I turn it off and never look back

TS2 and TS3 are very different games. You may develop a different playing style for TS3. I played rotational in TS2, but never even wanted to in TS3. The larger number of sims and open world make it a very different experience. Have fun!

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Scholar
#14 Old 3rd Nov 2017 at 1:01 PM
I always have SP turned off. Mostly because I noticed that the EA SP had NPCs change jobs on a whim and the Nraas SP didn't add anything I found interesting. I create my NPC households with Sims that have a planned story and leave it at that.
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