How Do You Play Your Game?

[AxelVal]

I have to play by the rules or I get bored 
I only cheat in small ways:
I skip the baby stage and static toddlers' motives.
I fast forward college to two hour-long sessions (maybe hour-long, haha)

I have the "No Friends for careers" hack and "Triplets/Quads"
I have every house set on "AutoPay Bills"
and if I have to I'll give college grads enough money to get a cheapo apartment.

But that's it, everything else is by the book ;]

[VampyrMuffinMan]

I have to play by the rules or I get bored 
I only cheat in small ways:
...
and if I have to I'll give college grads enough money to get a cheapo apartment.

But that's it, everything else is by the book ;]

Same here.  I usually try to get my characters through college and to platinum on their own.  It would be really boring [for me] to just cheat them trough the tough stuff.  I do always keep jealousy off and will cheat to fix relationships, but that's just because I can't pay attention to everyone's romantic interrelations 100% of the time.  One thing that I definitely do is age characters backwards...  Some of my adult sims needed to go to college and rather than just find a cheat for it, I aged them back to teens and then sent them right to college.  Played them until they graduated, then re-integrated them to wherever they were before hand.  So, the only cheat was the aging.  Well, and sometimes I give them money in college, if they had money before the move.

[Feisty32]

Bah, playing the game by the rules is boring anyways.

I seem to always end up using some form of "cheat" Even with my challenge hood, I give myself the freedom to cheat for certain things. But if I give myself permission then I am not cheating since I am making my own rules.

I figure as long  as I am having fun and no one is getting hurt (cept the sims ) then it really just becomes my style of gaming.

amen cuddles that is how exactly i play my game i'll sit and watch paint dry before playing by the rules haha lol.

oh ok madi i'll remember to call you madi.

[Madison-Simple-As-That]

Yeah, I know what you mean. I hate aging up my sims, but sometimes I do it. Except in college I ALWAYS use the college adjuster and speed through as fast as I can, because I hate dropping them out as it has the little X on the young adult sign, lol.

I could EASLIY do a legacy in my neighborhood Bluewater Springs, because I have default face templates and I usually try and kill of an ugly townie that passes by, so now my game keeps generating good looking townies and there's a crap load of them that pass by, usually boys. With their chest painted. :O

[DigitalAutumn]

Most of my gameplay is story-driven so I'll cheat when I need to (except for when it comes to money, I cheat a ton then). Sometimes I turn aging off, so my beautiful sims STAY beautiful (even though if they get old and die I can just resurrect them, shhhh) but if I'm doing a generational family story I'll let them age as normal. Sometimes I force-age my sims out of baby/toddlerhood so that they can have a little more autonomy and I don't have to go back to peek at them every 5 minutes to make sure they're not crying or fussing.
From time to time I use the education adjuster from the insim to take my simmie's kids and teens out of school depending on the type of story or neighbourhood. I spend more time decorating upon moving my sims into a new home than I do playing. I adjust skills or personality when needed (for instance, if a sim in question has a personality that the game won't realistically allow). Normally I set motives to full and then static when doing a story so I don't have my sims dropping everything to whinge at me every two minutes if they need something. Sometimes I'll use the insim to up relationships if things just aren't going fast enough between a couple, once again, for story usage.

...So really all my cheating is determined by my in-game stories.

[Paden]

To be honest, I play my game with a computer, game disk, track ball mouse, keyboard, cheats and custom content. Oh, and speakers and monitor, can't forget those!

[Feisty32]

rofl paden smart alec hehe.

[Chaavik]

Depends on my mood though for using in game cheats from the command window, but then I don't use those built-in cheats when I have an army of mods and CC installed to play the way I like to play Sims 2. As long as I don't have to play Sims 2 the way Maxis intended the game to be..

I had one neighborhood set up for a specific theme (Amish, 1950s and etc), one neighborhood set up for testing only (and keep other 'hoods safe from these test mods), one neighborhood for the Zombie Apoc and another for normal play.

The problem I have is having too much money after awhile when Sims begin to earn more than they ought to to pay their bills and to refurbish their homes. I would love to have a mod that automatically shred money if a family's household funds reach a certain limit - oh say 20,000 and shred 10,000 of that total funds so the family will only have 10,000 to spend to keep up with the Jones as well as an option or two to set the household limits per lot.

THEN I will be far more happy playing Sims 2 the way I want to play Sims 2.