Miserable Failure: How? Well, this thread is in part an effort to break the stranglehold of Satan upon the TS2 GD forum. By the time you read this, you may not notice this reason anymore, though. However, the serious question: I read about all these stories of miserable failures, both tragic and comical. I hear horror stories about messed up families, affairs, and generally things going horribly wrong somehow. How do people manage this? I mean, I've never managed to fail a family by anything short of deliberate perversity and enforced stupidity. I've only accidentally killed one Sim(Don Lothario) so far, and he wasn't under my control when it happened (and I felt the manner of his death, Death By Woohoo, to be so appropriate, too....and I liked the Don, I really did. He died doing what he loved....literally.). Thing is, the man was never caught! I was hoping to see it happen, but it just never did. Yet people seem to manage this regularly. I mean, I was hardly running Don as the paragon of paranoia and discretion, but it seemed like Cassandra was just utterly oblivious. The only way I could think of that would actually get him caught would be to actually have Don carry on in plain sight! So, in the absence of deliberately forcing the issue, assuming the Sims are left to live out their lives as is, it seems like the odds are pretty poor of getting caught... So I ran some more experiments: I created a slew of Romance sims, and had them do their thing. Finally, my efforts came to fruition: A family of 4 I had created, two children, a man, and his slutty wife. While woohooing at a community lot, the man(who was SUPPOSED to have been at work), finally caught his wife woohooing the Headmaster. Here I expected sparks to fly. I was hoping the entire family would collapse into a ruined mess right there: A breakup, some more slapping, perhaps a fight, maybe some sobbing at night. It seems, however, that the entire incident was met with more or less indifference. The cuckolded husband continues to be rather satisfied with himself, sustaining a platinum mood without difficulty. He's due for promotion again the next time he goes to work. The children, now teens by the time this finally occurred, are unconcerned. None of them fear a breakup, a fight, or anything of the sort. The entire issue seems to have been met with mute indifference. The husband doesn't even really loathe his wife: While relations are a little frosty at the moment, I could fix this in only a few minutes. So what, exactly, must one do to actually have some CHAOS here? Are Sims just naturally inclined to success, and only by open and blatant enforced stupidity can they fall?
I mean, take the Pleasants, for example: They're SUPPOSED to be a train wreck waiting to happen. People report all sorts of horrible fates that have befallen them: Daniel being caught with the maid, Lilith running failing school and running away...her parents and sister all hating her, etc., etc. But this never happens to *ME*. The moment I get my hands on even the most horrific train wreck, it all turns around. All of my stories have happy endings. But I'm a sadist: I want to see some misery. At the same time, I can't bring myself to play stupidly. How bad must the situation be before I can't salvage it? I mean, in TS1, I could salvage a lone sim on an empty lot with no furniture and zero money in the bank after buying said empty lot with no furniture. Can it be worse? What must I do?
Train wrecks and laps of attention I too have noticed that with the barest attention to details (such as not flirting in the open with your mistress) in TS2 can make all the difference. I have had one family collapse into hatred and dispair when a lapse of attention (I had my sound off and didnt notice mom come home from work) caused one of my husbands get caught with his hand in his neighbor's cookie jar (so to speak). The funny thing was, after dropping to like -40 to his wife and she to him both their aspiration meters filled with relationship-mending actions. I got them to platinum mood and beyond in no time. Now he is filandering carefully and they are happily married once more. The one that gets me is the seemingly random "make a choice at work" moments. These almost never end well, or even rationally. Do the selfish thing, get screwed. Then you do the nice thing and get equally screwed. Lose skill points, get demoted, get fired, ARG, those little dialogue boxes are EVIL.
That's what happens to me more or less.. unless I play stupidly or go into a family with a single-minded intention to cause pain and suffering, it's nearly impossible to truly cause a screwup of noticeable proportions. In the event that one does happen by accident, lack of attention, or act of God, it's nevertheless unrealistically easy to remedy. I nearly always pick the right choice on the work prompt things... except with teen jobs, in which I have never failed at choosing the good choice. NEVER. Also, is there any way to bomb a family other than cheating?
I have thought about The Sims being to easy, and concluded that this is the way it should be. If you want misery, start roleplaying! Play your sims based on what THEY know rather then on what YOU know. It's not stupid, it's just "in character". If your Sim cheater husband don't know that his wife is home from work, don't play her as if he knew just because YOU know. And when she catch him redhanded, don't run them on auto or start to mend their relationship. They are mad at each other, so go for som bickering options instead. Maybe even some combat options, lol. on a side note, I do think there should be some abaiable disasters, just like there was in teh original Sim City. Let a sim get cancer or depression or schizophrenia. Or something.
No, I do that already. I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about outright stupid: I mean, I'd have to make them cheat while their spouse is actually present IN THE ROOM before anything happened, and that's just too stupid. I've gotten pretty blatant about it: I've invited people over and gone upstairs to the bedroom to woohoo. The spouse remains oblivious, and he was in the house the entire time. I didn't even attempt to park him, I let him roam freely on free will, and he still didn't wander in. Even when he finally caught her, when he showed up unexpectedly at the community lot, he didn't even get REALLY mad: The relationship was still positive, and they still wouldn't fight. On the upside, seducing the headmaster is a great way to get kids into private school. Well, depression and schizophrenia already happen. They're just not EASY to make happen without some pretty drastic action.
I have had one family fail big time and it was the Pleasants. Sure I was asking for it to happen, but well y'know. First off I answered the 'question' from work wrong and the wife got fired. Being a Fortune Aspiration sim she fell into the depths of depression. I decided to see if I could finish her off, so I brought the maid and husband out to make out right in front of her. This didn't quite have the desired effect... The wife got real angry and "DIVOURCE" icon comes up, and the husband collapses into the depths of depression... I had 2x therapists at once The thing is, the daughters were oblivious and didn't care, and the divource icon seemed to INCREASE the wifes mood considerably... Anyway I played the family for less than one Sim day, and after the above decided I'd go back to my own scenarios.
Well, the Pleasants are one of Maxis's official trainwreck waiting to happen scenarios. Well, fortune sims do tend to become easily depressed. I'd have to say that having the husband make out with the maid right in front of her, however, falls into the "hamfistedly blatant stupidity" category I'm still trying to avoid. I can't really make any break-up fears ever really appear to be realized. They always seem to fear trivial things like failed social interactions, never anything major. Yeah, even with the official scenario, it seems hard to smash things up. Me, I rather liked the Pleasants, even if their home is rather badly engineered. There's a major traffic-flow problem with their staircase, and their dining area is terribly inefficient. It seems all of the "block" staircases suck, since only a single sim can travel in any given direction at a time. You also can't do the very nice "double helix" on homes with multiple levels.
J.M Pescado, I really like your first post I've created some sims, made *only* for "stirring" things up in the neighbourhood. Otherwise, nothing happens.
I mean, yeah, it's possible to deliberately and hamfistedly sow chaos and misery, but how do you accomplish this with any degree of tact and subtlety? Hell, I don't even know how some people manage to create horror stories of kids failing out of school and growing up badly.
i created a sim using all the worst ideas possible i made him fat, ugly, gave him ugly clothes, made him a slob and a mean-spirited dork, made his house a wreck (he sleeps outside, there's pee on the floor, dishes everywhere, and weeds are overgrowing in all manner of places) i even tried to make him be a social outcast and made him talk only to small children (i'll end that comment there) nothing worked, he still found a relationship with one of the hotter girls, still has friends he can actually invite over sometimes, and never gets into any real trouble i never even let him shower for goodness sake, he's always trying to sneak in a spongbath when i'm not looking his best friend is an RC car, dangit!? anyways, i was a little dissapointed i suppose. i hoped to make him the biggest loser ever, but good things still happen for him such is life i suppose
Well, Sims are not capable of recognizing when another sim is fat and repulsive-looking, or that the other sim is wearing absolutely tasteless and ugly clothes. Being a slob will actually make him MORE tolerant of the mess he lives in, and being mean-spirited makes makes him socially endurant: Grouchy sims do not take it as hard when people are not nice to them. With this in mind, I created the hapless husband as a fairly nice guy, in hopes that he would break down upon discovering his wife cheating on him. You'd be surprised how oblivious he is in the first place. Finally, after I started having her become increasingly blatant with her cheating, she was finally busted by pure random chance: Said husband, who was supposed to be at work, instead apparently went on lunch break at the same community lot and caught her making out with the headmaster. Twice. After coming home from work back at home, he was too exhausted to pick a fight, however, and promptly dropped off to sleep. Upon waking up, all he wanted to do was kiss and make up. Their relationship wasn't even really that bad, they were still "best friends". Augh. Clearly, in my attempt to make the man prone to break down when socially mistreated, I've made him a total pussy. Tell me about it. Yeah, I know. So our spineless wuss here, he catches his wife cheating on him AGAIN, this time with the cleaning man. Like the total wuss he is, rather than smacking either of them silly, he cries about it. Well, that's a start....but aside from the fact they're no longer friends, and he STILL wants to make up rather than break up, the family still hasn't managed to implode into a wreck yet. The man remains platinum, the children are unconcerned, and none of the fight options appear. Augh.
I, too, played with the Pleasant family. The wife was sleepy and went to bed. The maid and hubby were fast asleep all cuddled up. She walked around the bed, saw no place to crawl in and slept on the couch. I'm sure many hubby's would be thrilled to have such an accomodating wife but it ticked me off. They seem to have tweaked the jealousy thing to death..no Loraina Bobbetts in my sim game evidently. :(
i'm not so sure about that i created a sim (based off me, with custom skins and the like) who had an unbuttoned shirt (i skinned in a T-shirt underneath) and dreadlocks he was pretty good looking, designed after me *har har*, and when the first few sims came over to welcome him to the neighbourhood all the girly sims swooned over him before even talking to him or seeing his house, or anything like that he just greeted them, and they fainted for him this leads me to believe that certain clothing (maybe just head to toe clothing sets, not seperates) and certain facial features will cause the sims to be 'instantly attracted' i could be wrong, but it sure seems like i'm on to something
Naw, this happens with all Romance sims. I have a fat, tubby guy in a beat up jeans and a wifebeater, and the ladies still go swoon for him.
Ehr, real Schizopgrenia is MUCH much worse then seeing a "buddy bunny" hallucination for a little while, and real depression can't be fixed with a ten minutes hypnotism session.
Yeah, but childhood isn't something you grow out of in 5 days, either, and pregnancy doesn't end in a mere 3 days. Even God required 6 days to create the Earth, and on the 7th, he was arrested.
Welp, I tried. I really did. Trying to get two sims to hate each other is an exercise akin to herding cats. It took *6 freaking sim hours* of poking and shoving for them to FINALLY get them to be able to fight, and they made the little protest-at-the-user gesture every time. In the end, the guy loses the fight with his wife. Apparently, body skill makes little or no difference to the outcome of a fight. 10 to 6, and he still loses. I guess he's just a hopeless wuss. At this point, neither of them have enough energy to continue, so I give up, break 'em up, and call it a day. Sheesh. I honestly can now say I've seen jellyfish with more backbone, and this was only on a niceness of 6. I hesitate to imagine how utterly spineless a Sim with 10 niceness is. From now on, I'm going to start encouraging grouchiness. I used to wonder why someone would want to encourage grouchiness, but now I can just picture an irate and frustrated Sim father screaming at his son to stop being such a pussy and grow some backbone.
I went and read the article you posted on another thread last night about the Curious brothers and the ******* family. Could it be that really no one has catastrophic things happen..it's just the interpretation and captions added to innocuous screen shots give you the impression people have more exciting sim games? I recreated the hobo family that all died on his because it was a perfect little family group for my current neighborhood. I thought when they died I could have a cemetary! lol I had several little emergencies that I quickly snuffed out and realized later that if I'd taken a screen shot and added captions it could have looked very dramatic. Weave a soap opera around enough of those and it looks like you have an amazing game!
Yeah, I considered that possibility, but some of the man's struggles seemed genuine. I mean, the guy actually managed to run Vidcund into the ground, causing him to require the therapist, in what appears to have been purely coincidence. That's something I've never managed to do. The *******s were funny as hell, but unexceptional. Certainly the game is still amazing nonetheless, but it's really **** hard to crash and burn spectacularly, spontaneously, and while making at least a halfway earnest effort.
