OMGPETZ so cute...pass the shotgun

[Ayslhyn]

Pets is really screwing up my University sims. Even my favourite aspiration of Knowledge has stopped rolling up the reliable aspiration-point favourites relating to classes, assignments and term papers and all I'm getting are ludicrous wants to play, command or wash the damn family pet back in the home neighbourhood.
I've had shitloads of uni sims in bloody aspiration failiure because of this and it really shizzles my frickin nizzle.
Bloody Maxis have got some nerve to put this piss-poor crap out and get people to pay to damn well beta-test it because they are all so busy rolling in vast piles of cash.
Gahhh. Rant over.

[miros]

Can you invite mom and dad and the whole household over so your Sim can play with his much missed pet?

I knew there was a reason why I didn't let my Sims buy a pet before their kids went to college, no matter how much I wanted to see a toddler play with the pet...

[Ayslhyn]

Is there a hack? It is driving me insane.

[miros]

There's nopetobsession, which should at least reduce the pet related wants so your college students can survive.  If inviting the original household doesn't work, maybe mom or dad could invite the student to visit the old homestead and play with the pet there.

Silly question, can a non-YA Sim give a pet to a YA Sim?   I'd love to have a mascot for my new frat house.

[Ayslhyn]

You can have parrots and womrats.
And why should I have to drag mum, dad and Fido cum Fluffy to the dorm just because Maxis are a bunch of retards?
Heaven forfend that Apple ever get that sloppy. Perhaps they should just allow exe commands.

[Orikes]

I really haven't seen that many problems with pets in this regard. I've had a worse time with money sims in college wanting to buy shit they can't afford than people obsessing about pets. Honestly, the easiest fix without hacks is to just have the sim go on a date. Insta easy wants that can get a sim into platinum fairly quickly. I usually find after a date, the sims stop obsessing about pets anyway.

[Ayslhyn]

I do not GET date wants, God help me I don't get go to class or do assignment wants. I don't even get buy an expensive TV or buy a painting wants.
There are no "be friends with Professor So-and-So" wants nor any wants to fall in love or meet someone new.
If the family had a pet then it is wall-to-wall pet.play, cuddle.
Worse than piss-poor. I could bloody well programme better than that!

[numaari]

I get stuck like this with certain sims.  They can be any aspiration, and roll up endless strings of "get a puppy" AND "get a kitten" AND "get a puppy/kitten" AND "play with some stupid stray I've only seen once" etcetera, etcetera...

[dream_operator]

Yep, some sims get really obsessive pet wants and some don't.  It doesn't depend too much on aspiration, though in my game I noticed that family sims tend to be the most obsessive about pets.  I had one family sim that almost always rolled all six want panels full of pet wants and nothing but pet wants.  It was pretty annoying.  Thank God he was the worst and most of my sims are a lot more balanced in their wants.  I don't know if I would get a hack specific to this behavior, though I would probably do so if all of my sims were that obsessive about their pets.  Personally I'm really looking forward to Pescado's tweaking of the want tree to be more realistic and less obsessive about stupid things.  I'm definitely trying that out when he gets it finished.

Dream

[anelca]

I get stuck like this with certain sims.  They can be any aspiration, and roll up endless strings of "get a puppy" AND "get a kitten" AND "get a puppy/kitten" AND "play with some stupid stray I've only seen once" etcetera, etcetera...

all those PLUS fearing that the said virtually unknown stray gets sprayed by a skunk.....
perhaps that would be a blessing....any sensible sim wouldn't have any wants to pet the damn thing afterwards...
would they?

[Ayslhyn]

Do not rely upon it. On present showing this piss-poor programming can and does relate to pets the sim never even met.

[VampLena]

Thats pretty crappy, i got petz as part of my xmas gift but with all these problems and pet obession stories, im hesitant to introduce it to my Vampire Ruled Zombie Wasteland (also known as Pleasentville)

[Ayslhyn]

Don't be put off. It can be a fun EP. Just avoid sending teens with a pet in the family to Uni.
I'd hate to spoil your present. Do enjoy it and a Happy Christmas

[anelca]

yes it does seem to be a problem with YAs at Uni who have pets back in the family home.
i've got Lucy Burb with nothing but wants to do something with her dog
i usually cheat her aspiration to max every so often with the DMA burglar alarm thingummy
or merolas painting

[miros]

Just back up, install, and get all the new versions of JMP's and 2Jeffs' hacks.

[J. M. Pescado]

Pets is really screwing up my University sims. Even my favourite aspiration of Knowledge has stopped rolling up the reliable aspiration-point favourites relating to classes, assignments and term papers and all I'm getting are ludicrous wants to play, command or wash the damn family pet back in the home neighbourhood.

I will look into this and put an axe to it at some point. Because it's simply not POSSIBLE to interact with a nonresident pet and there is no way to phone one and invite it over.

[Orikes]

I do not GET date wants, God help me I don't get go to class or do assignment wants. I don't even get buy an expensive TV or buy a painting wants.
There are no "be friends with Professor So-and-So" wants nor any wants to fall in love or meet someone new.
If the family had a pet then it is wall-to-wall pet.play, cuddle.
Worse than piss-poor. I could bloody well programme better than that!

Honestly, if you're not getting ANY wants other than pet related wants, you've probably got something else going on there than just EA programming. If it was EA programming, then everyone would be having the same problem, and as I said, I haven't seen what you're describing.

Sure, there's a degree of pet obsession when you install the expansion, but with my experience, it hasn't been any worse than the wants related to any particular expansion. If you're seriously only getting pet related wants, I'd check your hacks and downloads to see if you've got anything that's not up to date, or specifically geared towards wants. Maybe it's interferring.

[rohina]

I find nopetobsession really helps, and have you also tried rerolling their wants with the lot debugger?

[Gwill]

I will look into this and put an axe to it at some point. Because it's simply not POSSIBLE to interact with a nonresident pet and there is no way to phone one and invite it over.

Maybe that's the purpose of "invite household"...

[J. M. Pescado]

Maybe that's the purpose of "invite household"...

What the hell am I supposed to do with a million useless people jamming the lot?

[Gwill]

Pet the dog you're pining so for.
No I agree, it's idiotic.

[anelca]

i've thought about this a bit more and reflected on Lucy Burb some more....i have nothing better to do with my Xmas Day

I have no hacks which relate to Wants and/or Fears myself
Every time i have ever played Lucy Burb in college, she has never been too keen on that book learning malarkey, seems to be part of her
character and whatever Aspiration she is given
before Pets she always wanted dates, babies etc (i never played uni with OFB as my laptop struggled...i have a new PC now)
Pets just seems to have replaced all those wants
Maybe with Seasons she'll be hankering after being struck by lightning....

[J. M. Pescado]

Pet the dog you're pining so for.
No I agree, it's idiotic.

Part of the underlying problem is that a sim can never visit another sim. This makes sense: If you did, the visited sims would all die since you can't tell them what to do and they'd get disoriented in their massive houses and kill themselves doing stupid things since they would lack the safety net of being able to flee to their off-screen sanctum, since you are now invading it.

You could invite the sim that wants to pet the dog over, but this leads to another problem: Since you can't tell that sim to do what he wants to do, and the AI is very stupid, he has no ability to comprehend how to go about fulfilling the want. He will promptly get confused by the house he's visiting and forget to pet the dog he came to visit.

[kewian]

well you could get an unawesome hack (cough insimenatorcough) and make the sim selectable. 

[J. M. Pescado]

I don't need a HACK for that, I can just shift-click.

Doesn't this seem like an extreme length to go to just to pet a dog, though? I could just tell him to get in his car and drive, then CRTL-Click and pretend he went home to pet the dog if I really wanted to go to that length.