cranky old folks I've noticed that as my people get older, it is harder to keep them in gold (or even green) aspiration. They need to pee, sleep and sit down more often and consequently spend less time working on their aspirations, which get harder anyway - often it's stuff like 'sell a masterpiece' or get a couple of kids into private school - not so much of the quick-and-easy kiss-and-flirt or eat-cereal stuff. Is it just me?
There's several reasons why this occurs. The need reason is not really the main one: It's not really true that elders need to sleep or sit down more, as mine maintain as rigorous a waking schedule as they did in adulthood, and Active-10 sims basically ignore comfort and don't need to sit down ever under normal conditions. So if your sims are lazy *******s, that's always going to be a problem. It *IS* true that they pee more, but this is offset by the fact that they eat less, and eating is generally a cause of fires, which depress aspirational meters and waste a great deal of time and money. Peeing is also relatively short, free, and can be handled automatically by the Bathroom Uses You controller so you don't even really have to concern yourself with it. These factors are all very minor and have no real effect. One of the REAL causes of this includes the fact that elders have deeper aspirational tanks, meaning it takes more raw ASPs to max out the meter, which remains fixed in visual size, and the fact that decay rates are percentage-based, not raw, so they'll bleed charge faster. The other noteworthy cause is the fact that elders, with a long list of life experiences, often start having "unreasonable" aspirationally-related wants for things which are rather absurd, due to the lower ranking goals being already satisfied. Since they already *HAVE* their 20 best friends or 10 woohoos or what-have-you, they'll start wanting more extreme ones, which are in turn, harder to fill. They'll also develop a large number of "indirect" wants which cannot be satisfied by any action they can take, such as "Relative-does-such-and-such". These are basically impossible to fill if all available candidates are nonresident, and leaving the lot to try to fill them undermines the point of the exercise, which was to actually play the elders. The want system can thus be rather tyrannical and unreasonable. University and "Lifetime Wants" changes all this. Firstly, with University, an elder will now grow to have 6 want slots, reducing the possibility of total lockup by spam. Secondly, with lifetime wants, they maintain permanent platinum as-is, dodging the problem entirely. Most lifetime wants are relatively trivial to achieve, although there are a few absolute stinkers which range from "bothersome and annoying"(20 simultaneous lovers) to "suicidally destructive to your game"(Marry off 6 Children). Some can be achieved faster than others, of course: Knowledge sims can "Maximize All Skills" easily before adulthood and be free from the tyranny of the want system even in college(which is actually quite fierce because in college, they have practically no useful wants: No more gaining skillpoints, nada, just random crap most of the time). Popularity sims can achieve "20 best friends", albeit at the cost of future progress since there is no collateral benefit for large numbers of friends. This, of course, makes Knowledge the only meaningful teen aspiration, Popularity trailing as a distant second. All other teen aspirations are now meaningless: Romance is irrelevant because a teen sim cannot normally woohoo and certainly will not roll any wants for such a thing. All romances are severed upon adulthood anyway, so this is pointless and largely indistinguishable from Popularity. Family is irrelevant because it is impossible for a sim to start a family until after college, by which he could have changed his aspiration to that, and since there are no meaningful things for a family sim to do until he can actually *HAVE* a family, this aspiration is basically completely useless for teens now, given that you can rechoose it closer to when it may actually matter, perhaps when you will no longer groan at their horrible choices of lifetime wants. Fortune is similarly meaningless as a teen lacks the ability to earn any really meaningful amounts of money, or really do anything useful that is Fortune-related until after college. Thus, University and the ability for all sims to change their aspiration halfway through college has basically eliminated the point of choosing anything but Knowledge, or MAYBE, (very dubiously)popularity, since none of the other aspirations are really achievable until post-college.
Wow. I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're right. I think being able to change your aspiration is silly anyway. I wish it would let me select a lifetime want, instead. But if you look at it your way, it makes total sense to have teenagers want knowledge. They can work on maxing out their skills, at least, though I've only had one Sim so far who wants "max out all skills"--all the other knowledge wants have been career-related. But knowledge Sims just seem more motivated to study than others do. Popularity is good for future family/romance/popularity Sims, I think, because all of those Sims want friendship and while it's true that romances don't carry over I have had two Young Adult couples get engaged their first day at college based on their previous romance as teenagers. They really really liked each other, so one kiss did it for each. They got pink and red hearts all at the same time, had a little woohoo and got engaged. I have to say, I like Family Sims, even though Knowledge Sims are better parents most of the time. Family teens seem slightly more willing to help with younger siblings, though I've had some romance teens do so as well without prodding. I think it's probably more due to personality than aspiration. So, maybe I'll try it your way and see what happens. As for "marry off 6 children" I agree it's tricky, but I don't think it will ruin my game, at least. It doesn't say they have to STAY married ... once Mom or Dad hits platinum all bets are off, at least for romance Sims. One thing I do wish is that Romance Sims would have the possibility of just looking for one true love, and that they'd actually want kids once in a while. Maybe with nightlife they'll get that aspiration. I had a romance sim who was quite happy to have just one boyfriend for a very long time, and she only started branching out when he refused to move in after getting her pregnant (that'll show him, the rat) ... she was also a really good mom, so again I think a lot of it is personality. OK done rambling for now ...
Well, I have an item which lets you reroll them, but yes, choosing your lifetime want would definitely have been a better bonus than simply rechoosing your aspiration, since this ability renders your previous choice effectively null and void, which mostly just closes off the options that are completely useless between then and now. Even if you do get stuck with and take one of the career-related ones, which, I point out, have very little in the way of variety and completely exclude the University options, largely defeating the point, so I tend to hold out for Max-All, it's still better than nothing: Your sim will STILL have an aspirationally related goal they can actually work towards. That doesn't really require an aspiration at all. No sim will end up having no friends, so you've always got a victim. Besides, I tend to arrange my marriages anyway, there's not really that many choices. That definitely has absolutely no relationship to aspiration whatsoever, and more to do with position and the wonkily bad autonomous decisionmaking. Besides, I don't find that their autonomous "help" is ever helpful, it's more like counterproductive harassment. And prodding? I've got a really big prod in the form of my automated controllers. I prefer using only prodding over having to overrule everything. Trust me: I've done extensive research on the matter, and at any given time, I can tell you what the correct action is. It ain't what they're picking. They certainly don't have to *STAY* married, perhaps, but at the same time, they *DO* have to actually *EXIST*. And it's not really that easy to break up, as they'll obsess and whine about something never meant to be for ages, then. The disastrous consequences of *HAVING* 6 children can be felt for at least 3 generations, and if you make it a habit, your game is going to be torpedoed fast. I'll run the numbers for you in simple math: 6^3 = 1296 sims in 3 generations, not including the now-deceased. This is an unplayable level of population. The fact of the matter is that the behavior of family sims is not sustainable in the long term, and this relegates family sims to be a one-shot deal that you try for kicks, then don't do again, or at least very often, because it is suicide on your personal time and the integrity of your neighborhood, which will undoubtedly start exhibiting overflow-related conditions due to Maxis's constant and stupid use of Set-To-Next 0x85 despite knowing that THIS IS BAD. The bottom line being that unlike other sims, the trail of destruction left by a fambly sim persists long after their death and is not a sustainable pattern of behavior.
I can see how bad having 2 Family sims want 6 children, and if they're family sims, and they want 6 children, then yeah...that would be rough on your computer. :S But seriously, who has a neighborhood filled with all Family sims?
Once again, I see you've done your homework ... I see you've given this a lot of thought. You're right, mathwise it's a nightmare ... I'm still on my first couple of generations. I can see my neighborhood is headed for trouble. I guess I named it Sticky Wicket for a good reason ... Yet another reason to let everyone stagnate in college for a while while I let the existing adults get old and die, though of course there are always the ones you don't want to lose. Of course, you don't have to fulfill everyone's lifetime wants, but that's kind of one of my goals. I tend to prefer romance Sims. I have an entire neighborhood I created that has nothing but romance Sims in it, but I'm so attached to my other neighborhood that I haven't played it yet. However, I hate the 20 simultaneous lovers aspiration. Give me a break. That's almost impossible to accomplish. 20 woohoo, no big D. Career related, fine. But keeping 20 people happy at once? Yikes. My best character, a romance sim who started as an adult and has reached the top of two careers, is in permanent platinum, has maximum influence and almost maxxed out in every skill, still only has 11 lovers. She wants 20 now, but since she's already permanent platinum (celebrity chef) I don't think she needs to achieve that too. I mean, I'll try but good god.:cross-eyed:
gee golly whiz What a flurry of game philosophy I have unleashed. From my technoneut perspective, I have to say that I like the way it's set up. Frankly my wants and aspirations have changed a number of times over the years and I do feel a bit more cranky as the years go by and I know a lot of people with unreasonable and unachievable desires. I like the random normality of the game, the unplanned events, surprising defections of behavior and so on. I seem to be in the minority, but I don't get the point of playing the game with cheats and changes that allow you to over-ride the parts most like real life. I try to keep them happy, can't always do that, let them run around with free will sometimes, and then make the do the dishes...how boring, perhaps.
I almost did. I had to catch myself. LOL Because I like family sims. I have never had one to achieve the 10 baby want, but I'm working on one's lifetime aspiration right now, which is to have three children graduate from UNI. Now I have started making sims either knowledge or popularity sims. I throw in a few romance sims for good measure, because they are just fun to play for me. Old married woman has to get her kicks matchmaking, I guess. LOL Maybe I should download the theme to a soap opera and have it playing when my game loads and my neighborhood screen pops up? LMAO!!!!
Wow!!! See, I have yet to have any of my sims achieve that!! I mix it up too much, I think. I had to do a complete re-loading of the game after I got UNI and experienced the memory bug, so my families had to start out from scratch, and still have not achieved the same levels they did before I lost them. I had 8 main families and about 10 sims that were thrown in for love interest, friends, what have you. By March, they had intermarried and was in their thrid and forth generations. When I lost them, I went back into the original body shop files and started them over from scratch. For example, I had a set of twins who started out as toddlers and were elders with grandchildren in March. I started them over as toddlers again, and now they are teens. UNI puts such a diffrent deminsion to game-play that I think it extends their lives, maybe even too much. It is not feasable to put all your teenaged sims from a neighborhood and play them in one dorm and keep them all together in a generation. I don't think, even with cheats, any more than 6 are doable, and I still wouldn't expect them all to keep straight A's. I have mine scattered: A few here in this dorm, a couple here in this house, four or five in the Frat and three in the sorority. They are all at diffrent levels and grades because of that, and it seems that I get one graduated, and then I have three more teens wanting to go off to college. How long are you playing your sims as teens before you send them away? Are you sending them quickly after they transition into teens, or are you holding them until it is close to their "Adult" birthday and then sending them off? I have been holding most of my teens back because of (A) skill-building and (B) space at school.
Depends on the teen ... If I like them, I keep them at home until it's less than 5 days before they're an adult, and then it's off to college. If I don't care about them as much I send them when I'm tired of playing them ... see, I made the mistake of making too many families when I first started playing because, well, it was fun. And I'm still playing the same neighborhood. But I honestly don't care about some of the families while others have become near and dear to my heart. I like the romances, having kids, seeing who falls in love with who, and Jiko I'm actually on your side. I hate cheats, don't care if everyone makes their goals, even though I try for it out of fairness to them, and for the challenge. I too think that's more like "real" life. For example, I have a Sim I really liked who I goofed up on and he got old because he wasn't happy enough to drink the elixir. Oh, well. I don't do redos. So then I let his wife get old, which is weird because her parents aren't .. actually her mom is my Super Sim and her dad is the Knowledge Sim I've decided to put in the platinum before starting a family with his current girlfriend. I didn't get the memory bug, Kristal, which is partly why Cyn the Super Sim got as far as she did. The other reason is, I played her exclusively for a long time because I liked her. My only regret is she'll never get to go to college, and neither will her "old" daughter Atalanta (who BTW has 10 kids), but her younger daughter Cadence is in college right now. I plan to have her move back in with Mom in her huge mansion--did I mention she was rich, too? They're both romance Sims and may end up being immortal as well. Cadence wants to be a hall of famer, which shouldn't be hard to accomplish. She's almost maxxed out on all the athlete skills already. So that's kind of fun. And some of my Sims will never reach their goals because they're unattainable, like my Sim who wants to marry off 6 children. She's in a girl-girl relationship that makes her really happy but due to a game glitch they lost their kids to the social worker and can't adopt any more. It honestly wasn't my fault. I've mentioned it before ... the curse of the nannies. Anyway, she's generally very happy anyway, has made Captain Hero (as has her platinum wife) and that's all she gets. I tried to have her cheat to get babies but she'd have to do it four times (two kids were too old to be taken away) ... and she can't do it at his house!!! If you want a kid you have to be at home which sucks if you don't want to ruin your marriage. Ah, life. So, she's stuck being sorta happy. And that's OK.
