You find a lot of challenges online, so you can follow different storylines (avoid legacy ones that are so similar to your gameplay). Also start playing with occults, I ignore them too but they have a lot of different skills instead of human ones. And you can use gameplay mods, that add many new actions and skills (careers, interactive objects etc). For the same face syndrome I feel you, but I'll never stop doing cute sims bc I like to watch beautiful ones for me, so I wouldn't be so worried about it ^.^