I'm thinking about redoing some of my neighbourhood.
Most buildings, both residential and communal, was placed from the house bin back when I created the 'hood. Since then I've become a decent builder I want to build something fun or useful, 'cause to be frank, I never visit most of my community lots.
So what's your sims favourite community lots and what do they do when visit?

(I'm not looking for suggestions, I want some inspiration )

I have so many favourites! My current game is a small farming town, so I don't have city-type attractions, but some things may be applicable to other types of hoods.

The open-air market where sims can buy groceries and clothes from little market stands, barbecue some burgers and meet people, use the photo booth for one purpose or another, and sit on a park bench under the big central tree while their kids climb on the play fort.

The hangout spot for rural teenagers in the forest in the back of beyond: fishing, campfires and a hot spring!

A spa with hot tubs, sauna and massage table - plus a bar and poker table in the same building, for some reason (it works - everyone finds something to do!)

Basketball park for sporty sims - it's a bit like the sports hobby lot but prettier and better laid out. I like making gardens with trees and flowers and then I get lovely backdrops for screenshots of whatever the sims get up to when they visit.

And a lot where sims can go to eat meals from the buffet (simpler and less time-consuming to play than an actual restaurant) and play mah jong and chess.

I've got a few in Arundel-the roller skating rink which has other games like archery and darts on it, the fishing hole which has of course a pond and a hot tub. In the winter, the ice skating rink is very popular too. Then there's 'Serfs up" which has a pond which doubles as a swimming area and fishing pond, a bowling area, with food and children's playground equipment.

I try to get the pixels out of their houses as often as possible during the summer.

The fishing pond, of course Other sims will fish, sit around, make food on the BBQ - but your sim can ask an endless number of sims to join the fishing as well.

Coffee Cafe - Sims seem to enjoy sitting around a table, chatting to other sims, with a cup of coffee.

Bar and clubs - having a drink at a bar on a community lot leads to meeting new sims as well as improving friendships.

Skilling lots - there are such a lot of interactions here, I am not going to name all of them.

Dancing - A simple dance hall is nice, and you can of course also have a dancing contest if you want to.

Swimming pool - those who don't like swimming don't' seem to mind floating or playing Marco Polo

then there is going shopping...

Vacations offer activities as well


There are just some ideas, I am sure there are things I have not thought about (restaurants, yeah!!)

Every sim neighborhood needs a place to buy groceries, a place to buy clothes, and a place to hang around outside. That's minimum. Ideally there's also a place to eat out, so when sims get stuck behind "eat out" wants on dates they can fill that and get on with the higher-level erotic wants. And if, as I often do, you're forbidding some or all of your sims from having rabbithole jobs (because it's boring watching the empty house all day), it's good to have a location for busking, cooking contests, and other ways to earn grocery money in a pinch.

At least one of these locations should be a place you'd want to take your kids. I find it hard to balance kids' energy and fun levels without trips out. Grocery stores can have pinball machines, or you can take them to the park, playground, skating rink, or swimming pool, or you can have a Community Center with games, contests, and activities for the whole family.

For the longest time, Drama Acres proper only had two community lots: Drama Acres Park, with a swimming pool, playground, fishing hole, picnic ground, and eventually a bandstand; and the Convenient Stores, with a grocery store, hot dog stand, clothing store, and arcade with pinball, arcade machines, and karaoke. When you needed groceries, you went there and probably ran into somebody. When your child grew to teen, they went to the Convenient Stores to choose their own clothes for the first time, and set their gender preference by flirting a cashier. I loved that lot. Spent many happy hours there. It was not pretty or particularly well made, but it was the first one I ever made and it worked so well.

I really love lots with fishing ponds because sims socialise so much whilst fishing. Also I like the shop lot I built too, it has clothes, pets and pet supplies, job board and groceries, and it also has vending machines and pinball so sims will hang out there for a long time. I always sneak a woohoo-able item on to every lot (except for the kids playgrounds ) so the shop has an elevator. If you want sims to stay on a community lot for a long time, have food, fun, loos and something comfy to sit on and they will hang around.

This lot is always fun for my sims, it's the 'Coffee Pot' (snooker and coffee, geddit) and sims stay there for ages because they love the Mahjongg game and the cake trolley. It has some soft chairs, bathroom, and a woohoo-able skip (dumpster). So it's date-worthy, too! There's even a bookcase so sims can study there.

Ooh, those chairs with the cushions on them look nice.

Lovely, aren't they? It's the Shakely set from LifeStories, that pack had such a lot of great stuff, and fortunately most of it has been converted. Shasta repositoried the set and made some addons, get them here:
https://sims2artists.com/index.php?topic=5122.0
https://sims2artists.com/index.php?topic=5839.0

Life Stories was the only Stories game I didn't play. It just didn't seem to have any gameplay that I couldn't get in regular Sims 2, whereas Pet Stories had the dog agility course and Castaway Stories was practically its own world.

I agree about the gameplay, but it had the best wallpapers and furniture!

I so agree about the fishing spot lots! I usually make a "forest" lot with a tent somewhere among the trees, a small lake for fishing, and some other facilities. If I'm using the Sun & Moon berries and mushrooms, I place them there too. Those lots are always great for socialising in and I also take a sim there if they need to wind down a bit - they stay in the tent and fish and forage and I picture them living their best life there for a few days, just enjoying nature (In a way I never do myself, I'm a failed Swede ). But in my latest neighbourhood I accidentally made a lot that was also great for socialising and that I really enjoyed. It was supposed to be an electronics store, but I didn't ave a single sim who might want to run it, so I took away most of the stock and just left a TV, a stereo and a karaoke machine. All my stores have toilets and showers and at least a vending machine for food, so it worked great as a hangout. For some reason it was where all the teenagers in the hood flocked, so in the end I just used the visitor controller and made it a teen hangout. In my head it was a sort of youth club.

Hello fellow failed Swede! I also prefer doing things indoor rather then outdoor.
The only community lot I actually like visiting in sims is a youth center, where all my teenagers flock. They dance, play snooker and fight alot.

(Visste du att "Swede" även kan översättas till kålrot? Jag har flinat över att vi två skulle vara "misslyckade kålrötter" en stund )

Yay, another Swede! I don't think I'm allowed to continue speaking in Swedish here, so I'll just reply in English: Yes, I did know a swede is a type of turnip and if I should ever forget that, I'm married to an Englishman who simply loves to remind me... But it is hilarious to think I'm a failed root vegetable, didn't think of that when I wrote my post!

By the way, I think many Americans call a kålrot rutabaga, which is a Swedish word (Or at least from Småland - "rotabagge") - so on both sides the Atlantic it seems they have associated us with kålrötter. We probably used to eat them a lot back in the old days or something.

[Off-Topic!] We don't call them "swedes" in Scotland. They're just turnips here, or sometimes the Scots short form "neeps". Along with haggis and potatoes ("tatties") they're part of our national dish. For me "Swedes" have always been the human inhabitants of Sweden. Unfortunately most of the shops today now label them as "swedes", but that's because almost all the supermarkets are now owned by English companies. I think even the German-owned Aldi and Lidl label them as "swedes", but that’s just because their UK offices are in England. It makes me feel that I'm live in a colony! It's one of the reasons why I'd move to the fiercely independent Grand Duchy of Veronaville if I could. It's now long past my bedtime, but I'll add a bit more explanation tomorrow.

Off topic, I know - what is a bacon buttie? (I tend to read a number of Scottich crime authors)

If you include fried egg, sausage, black pudding, hash brown, grilled mushroom, slice of fried bread, or any other item you'd likely find in an English cooked breakfast, it would likely be called a breakfast butty instead. Scottish variation may have tattie scones, fried haggis, square sausage or other ingredients.

Perhaps @AndrewGloria could give some other bacon butty variations too!

Thanks, @simsample! Already had Haggis explained to me by a Scottish South African, but forgot to ask about the bacon buttie (which is looking like I need to eat one now).

I may try that breakfast buttie once I know what all the other stuff is!

I'll follow your lead: I did also look up turnip and saw that swede was another word for rutabaga; the two are technically not the same, they are relatives. But people seems to use the same word for both.
I've never heard of "rotabagge", but I'm not from Småland
I guess we eat more cabbage nowadays (or maybe just me), would be nice if they thought of us as cabbage kids instead, especially since turnip seems to be slang for stupid.



Yes, "live in a colony" definitely needs an explanation

[Mostly Very Off-Topic!!]
A bacon buttie in Scotland would often often be often be fried bacon in a Scottish "morning roll"; it would look a bit like this:
Some Scots prefer their rolls "well fired", which is a euphemism for "burned until the top is black"! I seldom eat morning rolls these days because my local shop only sells them in "multi-packs" of at least four, and, since I'm now on my own, they'd be stale before I ate them all. More usually I eat brown "seeded" bread, making up sandwiches the same way as my Sims do, putting the contents between two slices of bread (which may be buttered). I've been been vegetarian since I returned home from Germany in 1985, away from the temptations of German sausages, but recently I've been able to buy a vegan "Streaky Bacon", which I think actually tastes a bit better than the "pig-meat" original. Becoming vegetarian really wasn't hard for me, as, with a few exceptions, I never really liked the taste of meat. The main exceptions were streaky bacon -- fried crisp, hamburgers, haggis and German sausages, of which there are zillions of varieties. Nowadays I can get meat-free alternatives for most of these, except the more obscure German varieties. Staying vegetarian could be difficult if I became a Sim, but, as long as I remained a sentient being (as I believe my Sims to be), I'm sure I could still choose what I ate.

Turnips and swedes?
When I was a student in Germany, I wanted to invite some of my German friends to a traditional Scottish Burns Supper on 25th January 1985. I went home for Christmas / New Year and bought some haggis in Scotland, which I took back to Germany with me. (I wasn't vegetarian yet.) "Tatties" were no problem -- I could easily buy potatoes (Kartoffeln), -- but "Neeps"? I looked up "turnips" in my Langenscheidt English-German dictionary, and it said "weisse Rüben". I tried asking for these in German shops, only to be met with blank looks. Then eventually I spotted a proper turnip in the window of the Co-op shop in Göttingen. I went in, bought it, and asked what it was called. They told me "Steckrüben". So I managed to have a successful Burns Supper with a handful of German friends. I recited Robert Burns's Tam O'Shanter from memory, having given my German friends a rather nice (but ancient) verse translation into German, which I'd found in the University Library. (The German translation used rhyming couplets, which retained much of the charm of the Scots original.) I even drank a few drops of whisky, which I usually hate. It was cheap Scotch whisky from Aldi, exported in bulk from Scotland and bottled in Germany. This was good enough for me but not for one of my German guests, who was into expensive single malts. Another boy was from Bremen, and he said that haggis was just like "Knipp", which is a traditional "poor man's dish" in Bremen. The truth is that both haggis and Knipp are traditionally made from the bits of the animal that a high-class butcher would throw away.

Anyway to get to the point of this story, it transpired that, according to the dictionary, it wasn't my German that was wrong -- it was my English. I presume I should have looked up "swedes" rather than "turnips". Back in 1984-85 most Scottish supermarkets were still Scottish owned, or at least Scottish managed, so Steckrüben would still be labelled and sold as "turnips". I had never heard of them being called "swedes". To me Swedes (spelled with a capital S) were the people from Sweden. Now, I know I'm not English (though I've some English ancestry), but I've been speaking English as my native tongue since I was a toddler, and I was taught traditional English grammar at very good Scottish school, and nobody at any point told me to call a turnip a swede. So when, quite late in my life, I start being told by the colonial power, that I'm speaking my native language wrong, I kind of object. [End of Rant!]

Now the traditional Scottish national dish typically served on Burns Night (25th January) and St. Andrew's Night (30th November) is haggis served with "champit tatties and bashed neeps". Now "champit tatties" are mashed potatoes, and "bashed neeps" are mashed turnips, or, if you absolutely insist, mashed swedes. But I suggest that, if you call them "swedes", you're not Scottish. I think a few of my friends here at MTS might violently, and justifiably, object, if we started bashing Swedes!

Now in Veronaville, where I would like to live with my favourite Sims, St Andrew's Night (30th November) is traditionally celebrated as Thanksgiving, with roast turkey as the traditional dish, but maybe, especially for vegetarians like myself, might we allow vegetarian haggis as an alternative? I wonder if anyone has made haggis, tatties and neeps as a CC meal.

[Back on topic!!] When it comes to favourite community lots, my Sims and I seem to have a thing about nightclubs, even though I haven't been in one in over forty years. Of the Maxis lots, I think my Sims' favourite is The Hub, especially the rooftop restaurant. Maybe they'd like it less if I had Seasons, but it never rains on them in my game! They also like the One-Twenty-Five Café, and for really posh meals out, Londoste.

In addition to the Maxis clubs, I've added Bopperz, a narrow 1x4 nightclub for heterosexual teens (I do have some!), PaintBoyz, just for gay teenage males, and Gaia a big nightclub with a large dance floor and a larger restaurant (upstairs) for the whole LGBT community. I suspect the reason why PaintBoyz is so popular with the numerous gay boys, is that it has some naughty objects from Sexy Sims and the late lamented Back Alley Sims. Even Andrew finds he can't resist them. He says it's why he has to go to church every Sunday.

Thanks, @AndrewGloria - we eat bacon on rolls and sandwiches, but it is normally paired with any or all of cheese/eggs/tomato/mushrooms/anything else in the kitchen - I was reading a novel where the cops really love their bacon butties and thought I'd just ask you

When it comes to community lots - yes, let's get back to that - I honestly think all my lots are quite popular!

I have a silly art park where sims can go and paint on easels (there is a little building for if it rains too). Some of my sims were lucky to be able to sell some of the masterpieces painted by townies (well, they left the lot ). There is a small kitchen for when they get hungry as well as coffee and a couple of things for children too.

The gym is quite popular, although the lazy sims prefers the loungers to the gym equipment

Of course, I believe there should be at least 10 bars in a hood, because how else would they go bar hopping? "

I am not fond of lots with every object in the catalog on them; prefer my community lots more "specialized" - if they go ice skating, then they go ice skating, not singing karaoke. Most lots will have a toy box or something for kids, but they will happily play tag or cops and robbers if there is space for them to run around too (and kids can become quite good at fishing if they visit a pond often enough).

Sims will sit chatting on benches or sofas and quite enjoy that on most community lots (all on their own) and form new friendships that way as well.

I just built a gym, no loungers or bars in it though, and so far the sims actually use the gym equipment!

I did make the mistake of putting a little coffee shop on the same lot, I thought sims could have a coffee on the way home... I put nice chairs and tables in there, but of course the sims make a beeline to the changing rooms to sit on the bench next to the lockers with their drinks!

@AndrewGloria The supermarkets around here sometimes label neeps as 'rutabaga'.

They go to a commlot mostly to a restaurant, cafeteria, coffee, buy groceries, gym, hot tub, private rooms with beds, library and telescope and to use a computer. I have mods for skilling and enthusiasm on commlot, so a gym is actually useful. I built Hans Trap Door corporation with almost everything packed on one lot on various floors, but I rarely go there because it makes my computer melt and the elevator is slow. Gym machines needed to be adjusted to be attractive to autonomy.

I had a bug in my earlier coffee where they didn't see chairs they were supposed to. There was another issue that happens with standing drinkers, where the conversation makes them walk to very distant partners, which is why I disabled standing drinking altogether.

These days I mostly avoid using community lots - but to the degree I've used them, I always preferred the ones with as much stuff packed into one lot as possible to avoid multiple loading screens, especially if my sims are going shopping or doing activities. One of the worst things about community lots is the loading screens - that, and several other reasons why I don't use them much. My first laptop had such long loading times it put me off community lots for good... I have used them since, but these days I mostly use mods to "internet-shop" for stuff for my sims, so they don't need to go shopping, and I don't tend to have them go dating and such, either.

So I'd say my sims used to have the same "out and about" mindset as me - get the most done in the least amount of time, then go home

I do use "community lot adjacent" lots, though, so I have residential lots that stand in for community lots (mostly for story purposes). What I have varies a bit, but lots like a cafe, a graveyard, a church, schools, hospitals, "street lots" for road scenes, grocery stores or other shops, a restaurant, a park, and so on. Any of these could easily be a regular community lot, but I just prefer having more control with a residential lot.

(I've used the community lots & the general roaming area more when playing TS3/TS4, though - fewer/faster loading screens becuse I barely use CC, and half of what you can do needs to be done out of the house, but it does get a bit 'same old' after some time. When that's said, I haven't played TS4 in ages, and haven't opened TS3 since around when I installed it, so... )

To me bacon butties are bacon and egg.



This might help. http://cyjon.net/node/340

Thanks Charity, I knew there must be a mod for it somewhere!

Most of the sims who went in there were more interested in Exnem's snack vending machine, they just wanted to regain the calories they'd just spent an hour working off in the gym!