Top 10 Aging Actions in The Sims: FreePlay

When the wizards behind creating the mobile city-building slash freemium grinder The Sims: FreePlay added the Life Dreams & Legacy Quest series to the game they were more or less up front about what the quests would do.

They made it sound pretty good actually; it was the mission that would finally complete the circle of life and introduce natural aging to the game.

No longer would you be forced to spend 5 LP on Birthday Cake ingredients and then spend a whole 24 hours baking the cake so that you can - when all of that has been done - finally hold a birthday party and move your Sim from one age-group to the next.

That whole process was widely considered to be something of a pain by most Simmers, so anything that would eliminate the need to spend those valuable LP or the full day's delay in baking the cake was a good thing.

The new mission would alter the aging process so you didn't have to think about it let alone actively make it happen...

And it added new areas and activities to the game, offered your Sims the ability to build legacy-style skills, and considering that the only cost to you was the time and effort to download the 5.3.0 Update - a total of 522 MB - and then complete the major mission line - hey! That is win-win, right?

The problem with that is that they did not make clear to the players several key facts that would end up not simply upsetting the player base, but enraging them.

First, the new major mission series turned on the end-of-life process that caused Sims to die.

Second (and this is the key issue), once the player enabled that function by completing parts six through eight of the mission, that feature could not be turned off.

In a nutshell, what that means is that Death had come to Simville, and there was nothing the players could do to stop it without sacrificing a lot of other Sims in order to obtain the Orb required - through massive effort - to guarantee life for just one specific Sim.

Most Simmers felt like it was both a betrayal and a bad deal all the way around.

In fact it is pretty safe to say that a lot of Simmers had the same reaction that Cypher had in the movie The Matrix - with his infamous line 'I know what you're thinking, 'cause right now I'm thinking the same thing. Actually, I've been thinking it ever since I got here: Why oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill? '

Ultimately the choice was viewed with significant regrets.

Simmers didn't realize that by completing the mission they were, in essence, sentencing ALL of their Sims to death eventually. Or that the steps that were required to ensure the safety of a single Sim would cost the lives of dozens of other Sims.

So how do you make those choices? Well, in an ideal world you don't have to.

We don't live in that ideal world.

While we cannot fend-off Death completely, or tell you how it is done, we can help you to take the steps you need to take to make Death's job a lot more difficult, and in the doing, extend the lives of your Sims to a far greater length.

Sound good? Well then read on as we list for you The Top 10 Aging Actions in The Sims FreePlay (and how to Hack them).

The Top 10 Aging Actions in The Sims FreePlay

(and how to do them well!)

Before we jump right into the list there are some facts that you need to be aware of - most significant among them is HOW the aging mechanism works in the game.

It is not like real life, in which the clock on the wall is the enemy, and we cannot stop it from ticking away the seconds, minutes, hours, and eventually full days of our life.

In FreePlay the aging process is linked not to the clock and time itself, but to the specific actions and tasks that we have our Sims do.

Basically that translates to the actions that we order our Sims to do. So in effect our completion of the Life Dreams & Legacy Mission not only turns on and enables the Circle of Life, it does something even more obscene: It places us in the position of unwilling executioner!

Every time that you log into your game, and every time you look at the Needs Meters for your Sim and note that they need rest, food, fun, and to use the jakes, you should bear in mind that every single one of the tasks you use to fulfill those needs is carving away minutes of their life.

Picture in your mind a block of granite that has been divided up into slices that are about the width of a strand of hair. Each of those hairs represents one minute of life. The closer that you come to the last hair, the more fragile and infirm that life becomes - in fact that is a great analogy for life itself since we begin it from a position of strength and, as we age, end it in a position of weakness.

When you lay your Sim's head on the pillow, having selected the 4m Power Snooze option as the best way to restore nearly the full meter of Sleep, and thus fulfill that need, you are carving four lines off of that granite block - and it is now 4m thinner than it was a moment ago.

The block looks huge, thick, and reassuring... Now.

Eventually, as time passes and as you make the thousands of minor decisions that impact the life of your Sim, that block is going to shrink and with it the invisible timer that hovers over your Sim is going to count down.

Like it or not there are certain activities that make up the Top 10 ways that Death encroaches on the life of your Sim - and each of those life-stealing actions and tasks costs layers off of that Sims block.

The purpose of this article is to identify those risks, and show you how to reduce the impact that they have - their cost, if you will!

There are certain actions and tasks that are unavoidable - because keeping your Sim healthy and happy requires them. They take a well-defined impact on your Sim lifespan, so the trick is finding alternatives that make less of an impact.

10. Hunger - The Knife & Fork Meter

The most common task that is used to fulfill this need is to hit the fridge and select the shortest time option available. If your meter is very low there is a temptation to select a longer feeding action but that almost always ends up taking more time than is strictly needed to satisfy the need and so should be avoided.

The most common selected Task is 'Leftovers' used multiple times to obtain a full meter.

As you can see from the survey of fridges below, this IS one of the Tasks that is impacted by the quality of the technology or appliance chosen!

- Blue* Fridge - Leftovers 18s

- Chill Co. Fridge - Leftovers 18s

- Dr. Freeze Fridge - Leftovers 16s

- Drink Fridge - Leftovers 16s

- Ice Man Fridge - Leftovers 16s

- Japanese Fridge - Leftovers 16s

- Neo Tokyo Fridge - Leftovers 16s

- Pint Sized Fridge - Leftovers 20s

It should be obvious from the list above that the tech level and quality of the fridge does matter, but that spending LP/SP on rarer models does NOT accrue any meaningful benefits so you may as well not do that.

The difference between the typical value and the worse is just 4s and that may not seem like all that big a deal - but it is. Bear in mind that they typical adult Sim is going to spend an average of between 1m and 2m per day eating via the Leftovers Task. That means using it between 5 and 10 times on average, so over the course of a full Adult Life Stage that can add up to some significant time.

That being the case you should make an effort to have a model of fridge that offers the 16s Task Timer.

* Covers all of the 'Color' name Fridges including those purchased with SP!

Posted: 12th Jan 2015 by CMBF
Tags: The Sims FreePlay, iPhoneiPad, GameCube,