More Awesome Than You!

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm utterly sick of Family sims who get demoted (sometimes right back to the bottom of the ladder!) and come home from work and stand there yelling their darned heads off telling anyone who's prepared to listen how wonderful they are! 

Does anyone know if there's a hack to fix this somewhere?    I don't mind them boasting when they get a promotion, or a huge bonus, in fact, I think other sims ought to be allowed to do that too, especially fortune sims!  But whereas every other sim weeps buckets if they get demoted, Family sims think it's wonderful!

I didn't notice that, but then again, I don't have any family sims in my games. Maybe it's the way I play the game, but they are the worst parent/partner the program has to offer. Aside from that, their wants drive me nuts as well.

I know this doesn't help you with your particular problem, but I don't remember seeing any kind of fix for that anywhere. I checked the German sites too, but no dice there either, sorry ZZ.

By the way, TJ has a nifty little mod. It allows same-gender pregnancies, it does however clash with all/any teen pregnancy mods. I don't use those, so I downloaded. Works like a charm. Now I can do it in-game and don't have to quit and go into SimPe.

On the road, too. Maybe I should make them go inside before doing this?

It's pretty deeply buried, I think. I'd have to look for it somewhere.

Glad you found the mod to help - I don't often have same sex pregnancies except via the telescope, so I haven't bothered with it - if I  want to have a pair of gay sims have a baby, I go into SimPE so often it's not much bother to do it myself, but if I were to want to do it frequently, I'd probably get the mod too!

I agree about family sims being a pain, but I do try to have a balanced neighbourhood, and with only the other four aspirations things do get a bit boring! I think a lot depends on what star sign you make your family sims, and how nice you make them!  Ones like John Burb drive me nuts too!

And JM, if you could make something, it would be wonderful!  What really annoys me is when they come home from work, the kid who's dog-tired rushes out to greet them, and they just prance about singing their own praises!

Sounds like you need the "hugging hack". It makes the action autonomous-priority, so it will not queue-wipe your sims, and if you instruct them to do something else, the action will be cancelled.

I don't think they are "bragging" about how great they are.  I think this is coded into family sims as a way to greet their family when they get home.  Kind of like saying, "Hi Honey, I'm home!"  Usually everyone is too busy to pay attention tho, so I cancel the "work" icon and they go about their life.

Oh you mean that thing they do when they get home where they wave their hands in the air and act like a tithead?  Is that just family sims?  It's like, no one cares idiot, go use the toilet and STFU already.

Yes, it's just Family sims!  Perhaps I should put a toilet right near the mailbox? :D

I haven't noticed them doing it specifically because of a demotion, they just do it anyway because they are so happy to be home.  They carry on doing it even while their exhausted kid is waiting patiently to hug them.  Incidentally, you don't have to leave the game to make someone pregnant, you can do it in-game either via the Tombstone of L&D or the Inseminator (the latter offers a choice of single, twin or random pregnancies).   Both give you the option to make your Sims pregnant with anyone on the lot, including "yourself", the Grim Reaper and the Remote Control Car (wouldn't recommend the latter though, it can cause problems apparently, although I know some people have done it successfully).  The Inseminator actually offers an exquisitiely named "Grimpregnation" option.  Quite a lot of the pregnancies in my game were boolProp-induced (much quicker than messing about with woo-hooing).

I tend not to create too many family sims due to their unreasonable wants and the fact that I simply do not understand them at all, being that they have nothing in common with myself or anyone that I know.

Thanks for the advice, but I don't use the Inseminator or Boolprop if I can avoid it!  I've also never tried the Tombstone of L&D, but it doesn't appeal!

I know they don't do it specifically because of a demotion - it's just that, whereas I can accept they do it because they're glad to be home, it's just so annoying when they've been demoted, or they've lost all the family cash or something like that!

JM, I'd agree with you there - Family oriented humans seem to be totally unlike Family sims!

They should definitely go inside the house before doing the cheering, if they do it at all.  That way the family dog can tackle them to the ground.

Of course, that's a hypothetical dog for the moment.

I think it'd take a hypothetical Staffordshire Bull at the very least!  They are so bouncy and unsquashable!

Well as has been discussed before, Maxis obviously had no freakin clue whatsoever what the definition of "family" or "romance" really means.  When they designed the game apparently to them "family" meant the want to just pop out one kid after another with no regard to actually raising/caring/nuturing or even interacting with the kid (of course until that kid is at Uni or grown and moved out, then they are obsessed with playing/talking/inviting over that same child that they just ignored for the last 25 days of its life).
When I first got the game the Broke household was the first one I played and I couldn't figure out what the heck was wrong with Brandi Broke; how could she be such a horrible mother whe she was a "family" sim? I put it down to trailer trash type of mentality only to find out that all family sims are that way.
And "romance" to Maxis is apparently just another word for "slut."

I usually move Brandi out and leave Dustin to look after the kids, even the baby!  He hires the nanny, pulls himself together and does a fantastic job, and even manages to get A+ at school - and I did this before I had any hacks at all!  Of course, I do get rid of limpet Angela!

You know, I have an irrational hatred of Angela and I don't know why. I guess that's why it's irrational?  :D

Then that makes two of us who are irrational!  I drowned her in the pool once (took the ladder away!) and she came back and specifically haunted Lilith!  I had to get rid of her somehow, she is just such a pain!  And Daniel Pleasant is about as unattractive as it's possible to get (apart from John Burb and some of the townies!) and he still fancies himself!

Hmmmm...you're right...I don't like Mary-Sue either, so I guess I should have put "I have an irrational hatred of the Pleasant family." Although, I do kind of like Lilth, she's mean.

Get rid of Angela, and Lilith is like a born-again Sim!

Me, I just focussed on salvaging the family with my usual ruthless efficiency. The first issue that came to mind was their HORRIBLE LACK OF SKILLPOINTS, something I took to remedying immediately. As a result of my general neglect of the entire Angela/Lilith rivalry, they eventually started to get along simply because I wasn't gonna buy two chessboards. :P

But yes, Lilith is much funnier, because Lilith is a complete and utter bitch, and I think it's hilarious.

I do the same thing. I don't care if they don't get along, they are to do as told. As a side effect, they end up getting along, I had that happen with the Smith boy and Tank Grunt who started out as enemies. They were in college and they needed skilling done. Who cares what the pixel people want, if they are lacking in areas I don't want them to be lacking, I pay little attention to their dispositions.

If the Have Child (or Adopt Child) want rolled up as part of a chain e.g. after fulfilling the Woohoo want, I think it would make more sense.  Family Sims, who are more predisposed to having wants which involve some kind of mushy romantic interaction with their spouse, would therefore roll baby wants more often because it's a possible outcome of the chain.

I have Family sims spin wants to play with their kids all the time.  It's all they want to do.  So I don't understand why your sims are wanting to ignore theirs.  My Brandi Broke wanted to hug and play and talk to Dustin and Beau all the time, and the same with her others when they came along.  I got her a handsome guy to marry, and she was happy as a lark.  I like Family sims myself, and Knowledge sims. 

I recently had something funny happen with a Knowledge sim.  It was one of the secret society members at Sim State.  My sim is engaged to him, and he moved into the dorm.  All he wants is to flirt with her, talk to her, makeout with her, woohoo with her, and the one that always comes back is WooHoo in the hot tub.  He cares nothing about schoolwork or skill points, although I make him do them.  As a result, it's not hard to keep him happy as his girlfriend is always happy to oblige him, but she is a knowlege sim and while some of her wants revolve around him, she also has the typical wants of doing her assignment and writing a term paper.  Weird!

They do tend to have different wants while at Uni, I've found.  Maybe it's a hint to change their Aspiration?

When I changed his aspiration at his Junior year, he no longer had these wants.  I switched him to family, and he started wanting to be best friends with other people.  I changed him back to knowledge, and his wants returned to the same as they were.  I decided to leave him because I wanted to keep the Max 7 skills LTW.

I've noticed my family sims tend to be worse parents than the other aspirations because they obsess about having more kids immediately upon having one. Take care of your current kids, dammit! Leave the flour-sack baby alone!
Also, I didn't know the family sims boast about a demotion; my family sim is a celebrity chef, comes home every night and yells what sounds like "I'm incredible, huh?" to no one in particular. What was funny was when his family sim brother was living in the household, and they would come home at the same time, stand back to back, then start yelling about how incredible they are. 

My entire population in my home-village consists of 94 % knowledge sims, 2 % popularity sims, 2 % fortune sims, and 2 % romance sims (for livening things up now and then). I dislike fambly sims very much, they are neither good partners, nor good parents, and their wants are downright idiotic.

The attached college has 100 % romance dormies for...shall we say, life education purposes :D, and I don't want a mighty slap-fest going on at every twist and turn. Should I decide that one of my playable YA's and one of the dormies would make an excellent match, I move it in, play it and change its aspiration when the option becomes available.  All my townies and dormies are home (CAS) made by the way.

I really don't think they are boasting or saying how incredible they are.  Sure it gets annoying, but I really think they are just glad to be home, as one poster said, and they are yelling to their family to greet them and let them know they are home.  They hold out their arms like they are ready to hug everyone and they holler what sounds like Hey I'm home!

I like family sims and I really have had no problems with them not paying attention to their kids or going into aspiration failure.  I have a lot of family sims, and I had to start playing the other aspirations for variety.  I think the way you play the sim drives their wants.  It seems the more you have a sim do something, the more that will show up in their wants.  Even fortune sims who seem to do nothing but want stuff will spin up wants to do stuff with friends and family if you keep having them do it.

I think all aspirations have their good and bad sides, with good wants and those that drive you crazy.  For instance, I like the knowledge aspiration, but the be saved from death want gets on my nerves.  How many times can you be saved from death?  And constantly wanting to see ghosts, even when there aren't any around.  And when they are teens it seems they want to do nothing but learn how to cook cereal (?) mac and cheese, turkey, etc.  Some of these I'll indulge, but there is no way to get all of them, but they will clog up the wants for days.

Well, it would make more sense if them holding out their arms did not, in fact, prevent them from being greeted, and if they went INSIDE before shouting! What kind of buffoon shouts on the street?

I find that family sims are too fixated on the purposeless harassment of their kids. The relationship can be entirely maxed out, and they'll still want to harass their kids and generally prevent them from learning their skillpoints.

Yeah, the desire to endlessly commit suicide makes no sense. That want should only appear if the knowledge sim is DEPRESSED, not when they're perfectly happy and should have no reason to want to try to kill themselves.

I don't generally have a problem with teens: You just need to know how to "seed" a skillpoint. Plus, it ends quickly since they tend to be really close to maxing out by that time, and then it doesn't matter what the hell they really want anymore. Get the rest of the scholarships, onto college.

This is true.  That's why I would like a mod to suppress this behavior so they can get on with whatever I want them to do.

Even college kids will want to learn how to cook everything if they haven't already learned.  I believe I know what you are talking about "seeding" a skillpoint.  If you have them study a certain skill, then they will want to reach the next point, and the next, and so on.  I also learned how to get couples to want to woohoo.  Usually they will want to talk or something, and once the flirt want rolls up, you do that, then the second flirt rolls up, and then they want to kiss and makeout, two different wants at the same time.  Once you have them make out, that satisfies the kiss want, and then the makout want when they finish.  Most of the time, this will cause a Woohoo with X want to spin up, and you can lock this or fulfill it right away for big points. :)  I don't know if this is something new in university, but it happens a lot now.

But it's the only romantic want that they don't fulfill autonomously!  They'd relax on the bed or sit in the hottub till Armageddon, and they still wouldn't woohoo unless you tell them to!  I ask you - do humans have to get permission from a minder?