I've heard a lot of people say playing "Rich Sims" are boring. But there are things you can't buy and avenues of the game you can't explore until your sim it able to satisfactorily eat, poop, and sleep. And higher quality/Higher costing items satisfy these needs faster and more efficiently. I don't know that I need all my sims to become millionaires, but I do find having Simoleans in the bank useful for deeper gameplay that's not just survival and promotions.


Thoughts?

I like to be rich in games to feel better than in real life.

I think poor sims are more fun, while rich sims are more relaxing. It was fun having a storyline where my sims illegimate teenage alien daughter had to earn money because her mom and stepdad were retired, and not receiving much.

So they struggled for even food. They sometimes could only get enough food to last one sim a day. So she had to work for hope of a better future and sometimes was only fed at school and/or work. She is in college now and is amazed that there is plenty of food.

While my Curious family got a chance card that gave them even more money. They are rich as rich can be, they make the Goths look poor. It is nice to have a household where needs can be taken care of immediately and I don't have to watch fianances when buying stuff, because they can afford it. It's been a generation, almost three and they are still loaded, and unless they have really really bad luck, they'll probably never run out of money. I didn't do the math or test this, but I think they could buy the whole buy catalog and still be loaded. They just have so much money.

I had more fun playing with the poor family than the rich one, but do enjoy having the rich family in my rotational pool as it's a nice break as they do take care of themselves really well.

Both. Why not?

In my latest hood, I will have both. :-)

But I'm making them "earn" their money :-D.

Keeping it realistic, I have a Sim who is the mayor, they are rich, powerful and corrupted, it allows me to build a big house with lots of detail (letting me be creative, but they had to get their without money cheats).

I have sims who have some money, but not as much as the above ones, who run local businesses.

And finally, I have Sims who have barely any money who are suffering because of the above two.

Past a certain point, it just doesn't matter at all how much money the sims have and there's no reason to do anything to generate more money, and the game becomes very boring. I prefer playing sims who are below that point. In the unmodded game, that limit is very low, and you would have to play poor sims in order to be under it - with college tuition, and other money-sink mods, that limit can be raised, sometimes significantly, which can make rich sims fun to play also.

To the person who clicked "disagree": I'm sorry that you "disagree" with me about what I personally find fun to do in The Sims 2. I hope you can get to a point where the way other people choose to play their games does not anger you.

I love playing and not worrying about money, but I also am a serial decorator so I need that money to make interior tweaks as I play. Even poor sims need to *look* poor! I have to afford the cracked wall masks, the empty alcohol bottles, nightstand made of suitcases, and the hodge podge of 'found' kitchen chairs to really sell myself into playing this poor household. Sure I love playing a poor household as long as I get 10,000 simoleons to decorate first and then whittle it down to under 1000k.

Poor Sims have always been more fun to me personally since TS1 days. There's something fun about saving up money to buy a new sofa. It gives me goal(s) and gives incentive to even build skills to get better job.

I like having a mix of both in a hood. The problem is it's hard to keep poor sims poor, which is why people get bored with rich ones.

It's more challenging to play poor sims, but challenge isn't the only source of fun in the game.

I sometimes find when I get to that point I will cut the money down. I have a scientist named Dexter who I am having go for one of badges tho and if he wasn't set up as comfortably as he is, I don't know that I would have started playing with badges because the crafting station is so darn expensive. And I need time for him to not-work at promotions to bang out the skill.

There are some game features you just can't explore properly until you've accumulated a certain amount of money. Businesses that sell crafted items and vacations require money up front. This, of course, is why people developed things like loan jars and mortgage shrubs, but I personally would prefer not to use those. Only simulate the interesting parts of life, that's my motto.

You can open a home business for free and sell whatever crafted items you want from it, and vacations are very cheap compared to the amount of money sims make. The loan jars and mortgage shrubs are for people who artificially make their sims poor, I'm pretty sure. I've never had to use them in my game to have sims be able to afford something I wanted them to buy. Businesses aren't something you can only do when you're rich in this game, they're a fast track to unlocking infinite wealth for any sim who owns their own home. I've actually banned home businesses that use ticket machines in my game, because with those it becomes way too easy for every sim to be so rich that even the college tuition doesn't have any effect on them.

If I'm doing pictures/stories/similar, I don't caare about money, so I'll give the sims a very decent starting fund, and top it up if needed.

I have done some "rags to riches" which can be a bit fun. I find I'm more drawn to that playstyle in TS3 and TS4, though, since there are a few more opportunities beside getting a job or make/sell stuff (or using a lot of mods). It's usually what I'll do if I'm bored and don't want to start with a family, but just want a few quick rounds of playing without commiting to a big thing. I used to do some businesses and such in TS2, but it's been quite a while. Had some 4-5 star ones.

I don't play a style where there are "rich" and "poor" sims, though. Can't be bothered with a banking system or anything like that.

To be honest, never understood how someone could disagree with how someone plays a game like this.

You're building your own little world, which only runs on your own computer and doesn't affect anyone else's game. So why get mad?

Besides, some of us play it to escape the real world, and creating something totally different to our own life may be just what we need.

Average
No starving - no useless statues in the garden either.

Yeah, who needs statues, they're a waste of money

/me whistles innocently.

I like both, though I wouldn't say it's a matter of rich vs poor. Mainly I just want my Sims to have a reason to work and to run businesses, what's the point of going to work and being off-lot for 8 hours if you don't need the money for anything? And it's not like I want the Sim at home 24/7 either, there's only so many hours it takes to fill needs and what do I do the remaining 12 hours? It's sort of like real life, where when healthy I absolutely do want to work whether or not I need the money, because I enjoy having somewhere to go and I find I enjoy my free time more when I get to look forward to it for 8 hours before I get it. Infinite free time gets boring, the looking forward to adds to the final enjoyment. If I can do anything I want at the drop of a hat, it's not really exciting anymore.

Which translates over to my Sims, I don't want them all to be at home 24/7, I want them to be gone so that I look forward to them coming home so I can do the thing I planned for them that day. And I want the fruits of that labour to matter, they should need the money for something too or it just feels silly. I have made everything (except clothes) more expensive in my game, so that the Sims pay check actually gets used. I made clothing cheaper, because I enjoy having my Sims change their clothes constantly (because Sims is really just fancy barbies, and changing outfits was always the best part about playing with Barbies xD) and it was taxing their finances a little too much.

Beyond increasing the cost of naturally occurring things I also have college tuition, and I make heavy use of loans. Which is why I'd say most of my Sims aren't really poor, they have things, but they have a loan to pay off for it. What kestrellyn called "artificially poor" I suppose, though I'd say it's more of a living on credit so you can have access to the thing earlier but still have to work to retain it. Mostly loans are housing loans, or business loans. I'd find it infinitely boring to work for 40 Sim days to get the money to buy a house, I want my Sim to live in the house I want to play in when I want to play in it, not when they accumulated enough funds for it. The loan allows them to move in, and then pay it off over time. Much like real life my Sims don't live in the same place forever, out of college they'll get an apartment somewhere, then perhaps a bigger apartment, before moving to a house, and sometimes a second house, so they are likely to take and pay off several house loans during the course of their lifetime (I have extended age spans). Beyond that if there's something I want to do now and they don't have the money for it, they'll take a smaller loan, could be to renovate their kids room because they grew up from kid to teen, or it could be to go on a family vacation. I'd label most of my households as middle class. The house loans and tuition prevent generational wealth from tipping the scales from middle class to upper class.

Whenever I go outside of that, it's for a story purpose, rather than the situation making it that, if that makes sense? My rich Sim is not rich because they earned a lot of money, they are rich because I decided they would be and I play them as I envision that type of person to be. Fancy clothes, big mansion with stupidly overpriced artwork and statues, frilly leisurely activities to fill the hours, having friends equally as frilly and leisurely to go on lunches with or have spa days with. I wouldn't want more than one of that type though, it's not entertaining enough to me to do repeatedly. But the one household is fun to play. When I have poor Sims it's also for a story reason, but I can have more of those at the same time without getting bored. Sometimes it's fun to play the game in RPG achievement mode, chasing goals rather than just play house. I have one elder lady who appeared from nowhere saying nothing of her past, that spent her entire budget on a tiny cottage and has had to work hard to furnish that cottage with things she needs for survival. I also have a couple that live in a very run down apartment, and have basically no money, which isn't because they couldn't get money, they just don't care to. They have no aspiration to be middle class and boring, they live by their own rules, tearing it up causing drama. Then there's my "hardcore challenge mode activated" household where I decided it was a good idea to create two main hood YA's who bought a farm, and adopted two toddlers. Fresh out of CAS with no skills, have uni to cope with, two toddlers to care for and a massive farm with hundreds of produce plots to tend. And loans to pay off (can't just ignore, you have to at least pay off interest as it accumulates). The toddlers are now teens and they are no longer poor, but the first year with them was hellish. Fun hellish though

both have its share of fun. My rich ones (I consider them 'rich' when they are RICH, I mean: at least a million in assets, below are just petty ladder-climbers). Such ones rules the town(s), sponsors games, tuitions, runs standalone bussinesses, provides the bank/loan/investments system, makes expensive events (concerts, balls) etc. There is a lot of ways for sucking the money from the rich. I usually make their lifestyle expensive enough to avoid endless piling of Smaug treasure.

I never cut money down in my game play. All sims have what they have, it goes and comes however it does. I do let my sims be irresponsible with money if they wish it, though. I play a wants based gameplay and some sims don't know how to handle getting everything they desire, so end up losing wealth that way.

I don't have the crafting station in my game, so didn't know it was expensive. I'm glad you are enjoying the badges.

(coughs in Cyjon's Bigger Bills)

Home businesses suck to play, though. Even with fixes, there's so much to dislike about it! So after I've tried it out a few times, that option is completely off the table. Might as well not be there.

If I'm going to do a craftable business (having tried out a few options) I need the sim to have lots of stock in hand and someone in the household with a gold badge and enough money to buy and build a business lot. Otherwise I have to keep stopping to build more stock. The fact that it costs money and time to make craft items, and that crafting, and opening the business, has to fit in around the rest of life, around needs and friends and family, means that opening a business takes a long time and costs a lot of money up front, and cannot practically be done without another income source, but a sim who holds down a job is too tired to do crafting.

Poor Cyd Roseland of Depression Riverblossom Hills, with his dogs and his kids and his wife and his little farm, is taking forever to get a gold badge and often has to sell off some stock just to buy groceries. How he's going to afford the lot for a toy shop one day I don't know! Once he does he'll probably be sitting pretty but his kids'll be most grown by then (and that's with Hat's proportional aging mod). He got a job tending bar for David Ottomas over the winter, just to make ends meet, but it exhausts him too much to craft. He'd originally counted on crafting through those long winters but it was too expensive! So he either has no time or no energy or no money. Now that spring is come he'll have to quit bartending in order to have time to do everything he needs to do during Riverblossom's short growing season. Thank goodness his older kids can help with the farm now.

Stella Roth, however, had starting capital and all the leisure she needed. First she had the salon, which had a low start-up cost - just the chair and the building - and when she had enough cash in hand from that to start a really first-class dry goods store chock full of deco items (including pottery crafts, which she's also had leisure and money to do) she hired Trisha Traveler as manager and started that up. When that got busy enough that she needed an employee she had plenty of cash for it. But running a business with a manager, it turns out, also sucks and makes the business incredibly annoying to visit with other households, and Trisha's husband had a telescope baby, so Trisha quit. Sandra graduated and got married, so Stella gave her the salon. The very first time I've done that. But now Sandra and her husband have a level-ten business that can't gain levels to access the cash rewards that they actually need because I have No20KHandout! Well, it could if they'd lose stars and regain them, but so far they just keep accumulating superfluous stars that will all have to be lost before they can go below Level 10. Maybe I should put a grill inside, start a fire. Good idea, that'd probably do it.

See, when I say "explore a game feature" I mean explore, not grind it a bit and find out what's easiest and stick to that. I mean explore its possibilities in conjunction with all the other features of the game. I don't like optimization in games. I need some spark and variety and surprises.

So anyway, what's fun and what isn't varies a lot with player taste and playstyle. It can all be fun with a little thought on the player's part.

I had a home business once - it was the only family in the hood who had a swimming pool. The retired grandfather was home all day long and it kept him busy - he loved to entertain the customers who paid an entrance fee to swim - and, believe me, they swam.

I honestly don't remember if it made enough money or not - the parents worked, but the teen son loved to hang around the pool with his grandpa and the paying swimmers as well! I am sure there may have been some complaining, and some problems, but I can't remember that. I can remember the fun it was, though - it was interesting to see which sims turned up, and how the fit sims kept coming back every day I had no mods back then - perhaps I should start one of these again soon.

Yes! If I am gonna explore a feature, I want it fitting into the storytelling. I know people who will target just like crafting or gardening for the sake of crafting or gardening but I like to think about how a certain skill fits my Sim and the life path they are on.

I don’t have a ton of rich sims, but I also don’t artificially cut them down to like zero dollars for like a rags to riches story. As a person who fell on enough hardtimes to know what life is like without a home, I don’t need to play the Sim version of that. But I find most of my truly filthy rich sims marry into it by circumstance or combine enough fund through marriage to do really well, but once my sims are comfy and their house feels perfect for them with a couple tweaks over generations, I don’t feel like they ‘need’ a mansion. They are comfortable, have a decent toilet, a comfy bed, and the objects they need to pursue the skills they like. And that’s still fun to me. Middle class is honestly my favorite Sim.

Not disagreeing with you, I just thought the first sentence and the last sentence created an amusing contradiction when taken literally. I understand the nuance, you did not enjoy home businesses so for you they are off the table, and at the end you are validating that others have other experiences for whatever part of the game. But it's still funny

I find it interesting what works for some and what doesn't work for others. My home businesses have all been smooth, though all of them have been yard sale type setups. One guy sold restored cars, the old lady down the street sells her craftables, and the farmers sometimes put produce on sale by the road rather than take it to the farmers market. Soon I will be testing a home run café, I predict that one will be a bit more annoying as I'm sure customers will stomp at not being able to access the rest of the house, but I'm fine with that. What's intolerable to some, is fine to another. But always amusing when something you do and have no problems with is brought up by someone else as horribly glitchy and bad (roomies spring to mind as well xD) and you are left wondering what you are missing

The trouble is that modern English usage defaults to saying "this is bad" when what we mean is "this wasn't to my taste." As you see, I know this, and I keep doing it.

I hate home businesses because of the way the business code pushes sims to behave in certain ways when the business is closed, and also because other sims can't visit them when being played - I can't send a sim to her best friend's porch for a makeover, and I can't force her to show up and buy a makeover when playing the business. Mods I've downloaded to fix the first thing don't really, and nothing fixes the second - it's baked in. Vanilla, owned community lots don't run well when other sims visit them, but this can be alleviated by having an employee permanently assigned as "cashier" or, in the case of businesses with no employees, with the wonderful "assign business owner" rock, with which I can force the owner to get on the register. I expect owned restaurants are nightmares to visit, though.

Lots of things that other people find annoying I don't even notice, so it's only fair that there's features other people use that drive me wiggy.

This is the reason I never play home businesses- I love to be able to take my other playables to owned businesses!

I like to have sims struggle a bit, it's fun to have them work toward achieving something, like being able to afford a holiday. But I find it too easy to make money, I need to implement taxation or higher bills to make it more of a challenge I think. All my sims end up rich!