God Broke the Crystal Ball

[Hejira]

This idea for a challenge came to me a couple of days ago. It's my first so I'd like some feedback on this.

Make an adult or young adult in CAS. Move them in anywhere you want/they can afford. Minimize the Wants and Needs panels. Keep them that way for the rest of the challenge. The only panel you can examine is the Inventory panel, since I figure one doesn't need to be psychic to see a Ford Advertisement stuffed in a shirt pocket. That's no looking up their relationships, personality, memories, grades at school/college...nothing except what they're holding.

The only things you will ever know of your Family are their aspirations, asp. levels, general moods, ages, money and LTWs. They'll wave up to you and complain about being tired or hungry, which is fine since God broke the crystal ball, not his/her ears. You'll have to fulfil sims' Wants by guessing what they'd want, with only their aspiration and what little you can guess of their personality and relationships as a guide.

You can move in and marry NPCs and townies - they don't need to help you spawn and they count as Family for game scoring. You don't have to ever spawn if whiny whinging poop machines annoy you with their whining, whinging and pooping.

While you can't look at a sim's skill panel, job panel etc. you can command another sim to ask them about their job or skills. Again, God still has eyes and ears.

+5 for permaplat old age deaths - once per sim
+15 for platinum w/o permaplat old age deaths - once per sim

-5 for every Sim resurrection - zombification is an exception
-10 for quitting without saving - bugs and crashes are exceptions
-10 for every aspiration failure - can be 'achieved' by one sim multiple times
-10 for SimVac platinumization - can be 'achieved' by one sim multiple times, SimVac uses that do not result in platinum mood aren't penalized
-20 for Strawberry Lemonade platinumization - can be 'achieved' by one sim multiple times
-20 for every Grilled Cheese sim - once per sim
-50 for every peek at the forbidden panels*
-infinity if all sims in the Family are dead and the last death doesn't push the score to +100 or more

*The peek penalty doesn't count if/when the game automatically opens the Wants/Needs panels. Reclose them immediately. Basically God gets a new crystal ball whenever this happens, and it breaks instantly once again. You can also peek without penalty in the last five Sim minutes of an old sim's life, just to check up on how well it turned out under your crippled guidance, whether or not it was ever a Grilled Cheese sim, if it ever got permaplat or not (in case you forgot)...anything you've ever been curious about.

The game ends when you reach or surpass either -100 or +100 points. The former is a failure state, the latter is a success state, and fast food is bad for your health. Thus ends the trilogy of obvious statements.

Failure: To measure the degree of your failure, count how many sims you had in the Family before you reached -100 points. The less sims it took, the worse you have failed.

Success: Again, count how many sims you involved in the challenge before you got to +100 points. The less sims, the better.

[sloppyhousewife]

I like the sound of it . But there need to be some restrictions, because now, it's pretty easy to reach the +100:

You'll need all in all 7 sims to reach the score (7x15).

- Let them have dream dates, until they can afford the elixir of live.
- Don't fulfill wants until they're in green (you don't need to see the wants for not fulfilling them - just let them do "every day" things)
- Empty the elixir to force-age them (to speed things up)
- Repeat if needed
- Let them have dream dates until they die
- No pleasure sims to avoid accidentally fulfilling a LTW (50 dream dates), which only gives +5

Dream dates are easy, especially because looking at the date's wants/fears panel isn't restricted, as long as they're no family member.

To speed up things further: Start with an adult 1. Let him date an elder 2. Near death, let elder 2 move in, befriend elder 3. After adult 1's death, start dating elder 3, let him/her move in. Befriend elder 4 etc. Thus, you even keep the number of sims involved to a minimum, which is preferable because

The less sims, the better.

[Hejira]

Thanks. I was too busy patching up the teeny tiny holes to see the big date-related one. (Isn't the date's wants/fears panel...still a wants/fears panel? Definitely clarifying that.)

Considering some revisons:
1. Roll for aspiration? I personally am most comfortable with Family and Knowledge sims and can reasonably predict what they'd want without seeing their panels. Spinning up a Popularity Sim would make me soil myself. That's the point of a challenge, innit?
2. Removing the zombie non-penalty? It doesn't seem to make that much of a difference in my strategy, but then I might be picking on Knowledge sims who might want their old 'buddies' back as zombies and I really don't want to have Wants slots sitting there wasting space...unless there's an even threat of this for all aspirations.
3. Never leaving the lot? Aside from college and home move outs and move ins, this would fix the possibility of the game being 'helpful' and all, "Lookit! Your sim wants coffee! And their bladder motive's very low. Choose wisely your course of action, omnipotent one. Aren't you glad these facts are here to help you?"

'3' would also cripple dates to an extent, since that wants panel can get filled with a dining out want, a 'go to community lot' want, and the wants to see rain and get shocked by lightning. Yes, dates make the challenge easier than I'd intended, but they're a part of the game and banning them outright would cripple Romance and Pleasure sims in the same way penalizing the creation of zombies would hurt Knowledge sims - uniquely.

[J. M. Pescado]

Eh, but the game helpfully reopens those panels at random way too often anyway. And technically, even making the panels invisible is meaningless, since it's pretty simple to simply get a datatable of the core motives, and then calculate them manually from a known point. Really, there's not much of a challenge involved. If you know what the want tree triggers are, you can even predict, or simply force, wants.

[sloppyhousewife]

(Isn't the date's wants/fears panel...still a wants/fears panel? Definitely clarifying that.)

For it's your challenge - you decide . Still, seeing the date's panel does help, but isn't really needed .

Never leaving the lot will not change anything - I always have my dates at home, because it spares me the unnerving and time consuming 500 asp wants like "sing karaoke with" etc. Also, the wants are pretty predictable because at home, there's just not that much to *do*. Plus, it keeps my date from wandering off to have a drink at the bar. Actually, I've only seen a "dine out with" want once or twice in I don't know how many dates-at-home, and never a "go to a community lot" want ever. In addition, the wants *will* reroll no matter if fulfilled or not, when the relationship goes up, turning to interactions like flirting, kissing, making out, woohoo.

Nor does aspiration have that much of an influence - as soon as a date starts, most if not all wants will turn to interactions with the dated sim in question. And a date gives you enough time to find the "right" interactions to make it a success, in case you can't guess them (but if you've played a lot of dating sims, you know them anyway).

Thus, with a "date 'til you drop" strategy, all other restrictions become negligible. To make it a challenge, ban the dates .

[Hejira]

Eh, but the game helpfully reopens those panels at random way too often anyway. And technically, even making the panels invisible is meaningless, since it's pretty simple to simply get a datatable of the core motives, and then calculate them manually from a known point. Really, there's not much of a challenge involved. If you know what the want tree triggers are, you can even predict, or simply force, wants.

I'm actually counting on random events screwing up an otherwise perfectly planned game. I know what people here are like. Although, I betcha if I posted this challenge on the official boards, people'd whine that the Grilled Cheese penalty makes it an impossible game.

Actually, I've only seen a "dine out with" want once or twice in I don't know how many dates-at-home, and never a "go to a community lot" want ever.

I got the 'Go to Community Lot' want every bloody time I'd date at home with this particular couple, and EVERY BLOODY TIME time one of them was two or three days pregnant! MORONS.

Now I have to figure out how to make God's broken crystal ball the excuse for no dates and rolled aspirations. Hopefully I'll dream of the answer.

[J. M. Pescado]

I'm actually counting on random events screwing up an otherwise perfectly planned game. I know what people here are like.

Considering that it's a challenge where there are no random events that benefit, standard behavior would be the ultra-cautious, eliminate-all-random-elements attack, anyway. The game actually has no random elements that cannot be easily avoided, and the few there are can be rolled into a statistical attack based on worst-case scenario anyway.

Now I have to figure out how to make God's broken crystal ball the excuse for no dates and rolled aspirations. Hopefully I'll dream of the answer.

Rolled aspirations are meaningless, considering that a Grilled Cheese penalty means you implicitly expect the use of the Orb anyway.

[SaraMK]

Here's the problem with this challenge. Due to limited scoring options, what is a fun and new idea turns into a tedious, boring exercise in doing one or two things over and over, because that's the "one way" to win the challenge and/or maximize the score.

The idea behind the challenge is really great, but the resulting gameplay is going to be dull. Like others have pointed out, it's just going to be repeating an exploit, like dating, to infinity.

Rewarding more diverse accomplishments could get the player to engage in more varied play.

Again, I really like the idea, and I think I'll give this playing style  a try just to see what one sim can accomplish from birth to death if played this way.