Townie Children Are... You decide: Are they cute little angels who make great friends for your own Simchildren, depraved, hellspawned imps who like to crank call total strangers and lead your sim children astray by clogging their aspiration meters?
Wolves in sheeps clothing these are! At first it was cute when my child brought a friend home from school that i'd never seen, but once the child had ONE short conversation with the father and then proceed to call him every night... it quickly grew thin. Now I try and avoid them, if I get the "brings a friend home from school" notification, I immediately "Say Goodbye", and GENERALLY they take a hint. If only they grew up.
Hell, I'd be happy if they were at least up for adoption, which would satisfy the "grow up" problem. As it stands, they exist in some sort of timeless Neverland....which wouldn't, in itself, be so obnoxious, if they weren't phone stalkers of greater perniciousness than telemarketers. Hell, if they put telemarketers *IN* TS2, they wouldn't be this annoying! At least telemarketers only call during dinner hours!
Agreed on all counts. One of my families were harrassed continuously by about 5 children (big mistake on my part), day and night, night and day... answering the phone wasted precious time, but letting it sit and ring for 1.5 !@#% HOURS drives me crazy. The last straw came somewhere around the 283795th call, when I invited them all over and incinerated them. In pace requiescat.
The most annoying thing about the phone ringing is that you can't just cut them off if you want to make an outgoing call. In real life, if your phone is ringing, and you want to make an outgoing call, you just pick up the phone slightly, put it down again, and then pick it up for real and dial. Problem solved. In TS2, Sims refuse to place an outgoing call if the phone rings, and cannot hang up without answering it, which takes forever.
Exactly! There needs to be a "Cut Off" option with ringing phones or something. Recently, I've been using moveobjects to sell ringing phones, then buying fresh ones so the phone can be used immediately. Or, there could be an option to "Scream into phone", which would discourage the Sim at the receiving end from making future calls.
Townie children are hellspawn This is the one that got me. One of my sim kids (Tayla) brings him a sim kid from school. Everything goes well with the visit (except the kid pocketed my Simolean tree profits GRRR) and the kid goes home. The reall annoyance occured when the kid called for Tayla every day while she and the kid were both at school! The father was working nights and getting awakened at 10 AM to say "No, she can't talk, how about you go back to home room and talk to her there you retarded monkey!" seriously screwed up his energy recovery. The only answer was to ignore him entirely until his rel;ationship with Tayla bottomed out then he stopped calling. I also hate people who call me and when i call them back to invite them over I find out they are at work. W*****s. But that's an entirely new gripe.
I totally agree, Townie Sim Children are highly annoying! I have one, Marsha, who constantly calls poor Mavis Yokel. Mavis has been struggling lately trying to be a single mom to her two children, and doesn't have time to yap on the phone about whatever it is this girl wants to yap about! Marsha does not call for the children, which would make better sense. If the children answer the phone, she'll just ask for Mavis! Something else I've noticed odd with this family: The father of the two children will regularly call the children and talk to them, but not the mother. Mavis will have to call him to fill a want.
They should come up with Caller ID. Then when the phone rings a pie would come up with caller name and option to answer, ignore or tell them to piss off. @Cyricc ROFL I love your solution. Crispy, but effective.
I would relish a "NEVER call here again!" option... I have the same problem with a little stalker kid (one of the Orlandos) whom my sim met ONCE in a community lot (probably while watching TV together) and he calls every day. Their relationship will sit a zero, and he still calls. I wish the townies DID have some kind of residence, so I could take my sim over there and kick some butt... A simple, "Ignore" feature would be nice...
I find this whole thread funny. Not once has it even occured to me to have an adult become friends with a child! lol I must treat the simchild/teen much like I do real ones. Uninvited guests may come in and play console games until my child's fun and social is maxed. The minute they try to head for the kitchen or wander through the house, they are shown the door with a polite goodbye. In real life, if my child came home and told me they made friends with an old man at the playground I'd have the entire police force swarming it. I must subconsciously play sims like that! lol Adults don't talk to strange children in my sim world. Since children in the game don't age at the same pace I never let mine develop a friend to the "happy face" level..the only exception being a teen with a girl/boyfriend to meet "first kiss" aspiration. I even let that one die a natural death before they reach adulthood. (Of course if everyone played like me..one phone in hall, basement, attic or outside..and the sound off, you or your sims never know the phone is ringing! lol Is there any real reason to answer the phone in sims2 that I'm missing?)
Speaking of going someplace and kicking someone's butt, has anyone noticed that it's basically nearly impossible to remain enemies with a sim in another family? The natural decay of any relationship towards 0, which makes sense for friends, but DOESN'T make any sense for ENEMIES, more or less precludes remaining enemies: Once you're into the negatives, they refuse to visit you, and once this happens, the relationship more or less just decays towards 0 until you're neutral again. If the sims meet uncontrolled on a community lot, more likely than not they'll IMPROVE their relationship rather than fighting. All this makes it very hard for any two families to remain enemies. It's somewhat unrealistic: After all, friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
I've had this happen too... I made a new Sim, and the first person that came over was Joe Carr, I thought I'd introduce my new Sim to him, and immediately Joe started fighting with my Sim... So, I decided if that's the way he wanted it, fine, he'd make a new enemy. I had them fight until they were at least at -50. It surprised me when later on the next day Joe would call to chat with my Sim.. As if they were friends! I kept hanging up on him, because I wanted to really have an enemy. I figured that it would gradually go to 0 again, but I wasn't going to help them along. Joe called every day to chat which kept bringing them closer to zero automatically... For one, if you spent a whole day fighting with someone, would you call to chat later on? I was hoping that Joe would crank call him, or argue with him over the phone, now THAT would have been funny. Also, the description over Joe was still the "I hope we can become friends" one, instead of something that reflected their negative status.
Personally, I think they should make it so that once a Sim's relationship hits -50 daily, instead of recovering if left alone, it festers and creeps towards -100 instead, towing the lifetime rating down with it, and stays there. That'd be more realistic, as in real life, friends come and go, but enemies accumulate, and do not require constant contact to remain loathed. There are people who loathe me, and I haven't actually seen them in years, but they've still occasionally still try to have me killed. I allow them to live only because they bring amusement to my day with their attempts.
I just thought I'd bring this one back to tell everyone that I have, in fact, devised a solution to get rid of the hellspawn once and for all: Having hacked out the regeneration of child townies, any child townies removed from play will henceforth be replaced by regular, much more tolerable, adult townies. Of course, the existing child and teen townies are unaffected by this, since they already exist, but I guarantee you that changing this state can be highly enjoyable, therapeutic, and even heart-warming. Anyone interested?
Cool. Count me in. Does this mean that, after the townie population has been culled, Sim children will actually (gasp) bring USEFUL friends back home?
Well, they'll bring back YOUR sims, anyway. Or they won't bring back anyone, if you have no sim children, and have killed all of your townies, to boot. There's another one if you really hate townies period, or just want to temporarily suspend all townie regeneration for whatever nefarious scheme, such as a desire to empty the townie pool by whatever means, before regenerating them. Both hacks are compatible with each other, although one, obviously, alters the regeneration ratios, whereas the other entirely suppresses the regeneration without regards to ratio, rendering the former temporarily moot. Get 'em here: http://forums.worldsims.org/showthread.php?t=3593
