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flethro · 3 years ago

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Just to say I love your bacc (what I've read so far). It's inspiring. I did start one myself but was not happy with it. Trying to find a reason for the new world that's not too much like anyone else's.

I like the council, club ideas etc..idea from both you and simsville. Wish I was more creative

I'm trying to be realistic as to why I was searching up simcity and it talked about sim nation which I believe led me to your playthrough. Not really a question but I hope to use your version as inspiration and be different. So hard.

Firstly, thank you for getting in touch. I can relate to the situation you’re in, I felt that way at the start.

It’s nice to hear you say you want to be different with your ideas. We all have a different goal with how we play a Sims game, sometimes that can be a simple variation on something we’ve seen before and other times it’s quite specific.

My reply has turned out to be quite long, so I've added a read-more link here. I hope it's useful to you. 🙂

It’s also great that you’ve come across Simmerville. I found many of their ideas to be a good springboard for coming up with my own. Some of the core parts of how I play are simply personal tweaks to what Simmerville has shared over the years so I would recommend continuing to look over their gameplay for inspiration.

I should mention I don’t specifically play a bacc at the moment, but my gameplay is always revolved around the same general theme of building up a community, no matter which Sims game I’m playing. I don’t worry about restrictions that someone else has created if I can come up with something that sounds more enjoyable so I would encourage you to go with what sounds fun over anything else.

Creating reasons why Sims would want or need to move between neighbourhoods is an important factor for me and could bring some extra variety to your game if you haven’t done so already. You could limit what types of job opportunities there are in each world. Maybe a Sim would need to move to a specific neighbourhood if they are aiming for higher promotions in a particular career track.

Limiting the number of individual career positions across the board would be something to think about and would give local councils some goals to think about for the future. A community often has something they are known for in real life, no matter where they are in the world, so they are likely to use it to their advantage whether that be attracting people to live there or using it to strengthen their local economy through business and commerce. The reasons are yours in the end but once you flesh out some personalities for your Sims, maybe ask yourself what they want to see around them. Maybe the first handful of generations in a community can guide it in a direction that relates to their own career preferences (which would be what the community becomes known for) or it could be based on careers that lend well to a particular neighbourhood.

If you are concerned about your Sims becoming ultra rich and boring to play, Simmerville’s ideas on running a Stock Market is one avenue you could go down. Sims can buy individual shares for $10,000 as an example which generates simoleons for them slowly over time (perhaps $100 or $1000 per round) and can be passed on to other Sims when they die as part of their inheritance. At the end of every round, you would roll a 6-sided die and decide whether the shares had increased or decreased in value over the year. You could even create a board of directors for each company that might have some influence over the way your world develops by poking politician Sims to make decisions that are in their favour. Many ideas would require you to keep notes over time, so try not to overwhelm yourself at the start and incorporate ideas slowly over time to allow yourself time to see if they are right for you.

The more time you spend with your Sims, the more time you have to work out what type of characters they are (and are becoming as time moves on). I like to ask myself ‘What do they really want? What makes them different to other Sims around them and what might they have in common?’

As you raised the topic of SimCity, I would probably recommend you think over a few subjects that might need to be considered by each local council like housing, education levels, a town’s income and running costs if you are keeping track of a community’s finances, etc.

I prefer my Sims to arrive slowly over time, either in small groups or individually, whichever suits. A council has to make decisions and that usually means you have people that like the decision and others that don’t. You can’t please everyone, as the phrase goes, so if you have a general over-arching neighbourhood story on the way, this can make for some drama and maybe some family feuds.

A community needs to be prepared for an increased or decreased flow in population as well. Do they stop Sims at the door and tell them they don’t have enough room or look for ways to take the people in? Maybe a boarding house situation is the answer for a neighbourhood that is too big to have more residential housing. It gives a local Sim a way of earning simoleons that isn’t a conventional career and gives their guests somewhere to live until they find another solution. It is up to you in the end, but you could have your Sims make the decision for you (for better or worse!) if they have some authority.

This wouldn’t work with a traditional bacc ruleset but depending on how many details you’d like to keep track of, you might be interested in giving each Sim a maximum amount of skill points they can achieve in their lifetime. This number could be increased if they receive good grades or graduate university. If two Sims have a child, you could find the average between both parents’ skill scores and the resulting number could be the child’s initial skill score (which could be improved with education as they grow older). This is one of the ideas I came across from Simmerville a few years ago.

It’s a good idea to stop and reflect on how complicated you want your game to be. How many details can you take into account before it seems too much? You then look at what ideas probably don’t need to be there after all or could be simplified to a point that still satisfies you.

I hope you work out a way of playing that suits you well. A lot of it does come down to creativity, but that shouldn’t be seen as a negative. We are all capable of being more creative, so don’t be too hard on yourself and take your time to create a world for your Sims that you enjoy playing in.

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