More Awesome Than You!

Ok so I am wanting a harder game. I have almost even mod known to simmers so Which mods would you recommend removing. Or possibly adding. Please esplain why. Thanks :)

Define harder. Harder as in "more aggravating", or what?

Add Pescado's director's cut.
Remove everything else.

Nohomework, nowhatisthis, and phonehack - and you will get nuts...:).

Add:
1) 'no20khandout', and your sims will come home from college only with what they have left over from their grants.
2) a risky woohoo mod, to make any woohoo have a chance of pregnancy
3) TwoJeffs new casual romance, to really crank things up :)


Take out:
1) anything that keeps robots, especially servos, from breaking
2) anything that stops autonomous actions that can hurt relationships, like rock-paper-scissors, noggies, pranks, etc.


And never turn off jealousy on any lot anywhere...

In addition to other suggestions:

* I have a hack that meant that I don't have to restock the fridge.  When I decided to take it out this week, I noticed that I also had a hack that stops furious sims kicking over trashcans.  It's been sitting there so long I forgot I had it.  And I was wondering why my sims rarely get sick ... duh.  Say no to these types of hacks if you want a harder game.

* When your toddlers grow into children unstick the smart milk by resetting them or using Pescado's lot debugger.  Or don't use smart milk and thinking caps at all.  These are the only 2 aspiration rewards I use anyway.

* Don't move gravestones off the lot and don't use Pescado's ghostbuster mod.  Note that I don't follow my advice here.  Graves are moved to a cemetary in my game.  In one neighbourhood a vampire couple ran the local cemetary as a venue.

* Try playing a few challenges that don't let you control other sims - like I'm Surrounded by Idiots or the Asylum challenge.

* Don't use macrotastics to skillinate your sims.  This one is hard for me - I always say I won't use it and that I'll let my sims have free will, and within a few simdays I'm back to macro skillinating sims and have removed their free will.

* I saw another topic here recently where someone said they used debug mode to take away half the skill points when their sims transitioned to the next age group.  This would make getting the scholarships a little harder.

Harder skilling. http://www.omniloth.net/sims/ts2_hacks.htm

I'm pretty sure these still work, although they were made back when Uni came out. You might want to scan for conflicts.

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=179482 (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=179482)
This is a hack that allows adults to go to college, but they also keep their day jobs. So far, so good, and it actually does make Uni almost challenging!

Uni definitely needs to be made harder. There should be something like a daily grade decrease, forcing Sims to do more than just go to classes: going to class every day should not increase the meter, but just keep it level. As it is now any student can graduate Summa Cum Laude without problems.

Bless you, croiduire, for the link. Now I can send Komei and Lila (the townie with the cowboy hat, different name in hoods), which have already teen kids, to the college...:). Woohoo!

OOOOOH!!!! Now I can have mature age students.  I've been wanting that ever since Uni came out (since I was a mature age student at the time)

/me does a happy Snoopy dance across the forum, then remembers she should have pressed the thanks button.  BAAAAA!

I tried the Asylum challenge with the director's cut in.  I failed misserably.
Director's cut made that one a real challenge.

Sims rarely get sick from trashcans anyway, because that only creates roaches outside, which don't seem to have the ability to cross the foundations, and thus are always outside and cannot really affect your sims. Eventually, you notice them and send the exterminators kill them.

I always figured this mostly defeated the point of playing the game. Why bother wasting my CPU time if I'm not going to do anything anyway?

Meh, and you'd rather give the orders all one by one yourself? Have fun. I wouldn't say this is harder, just slower.

Well, given that this would kinda devaluate all skillpoints, since high-level skills are harder to gain than low-level ones, it rather defeats the point of gaining them at all, you may as well wait until you'll be keeping them. A better option would be to get somebody's "much slower" skillpoint gain thing. But frankly, skillpoints aren't that interesting to watch. :P

Well, if going to class every day is enough to keep the meter level, then the situation remains unchanged. If grades will go down no matter what you do, then there's no point in early-studying, since you will just lose them, and it would thus make more sense to just wait until the closer to before the finals to even bother with trying, since anything you do before then is wasted effort. Although it would, at least recreate the typical behavior of real students, that of last-minute cramming. :P

To be truly authentic they'd have to worry, clean or eat compulsively as well - which cuts into study time, of course.

Well, it's hard to eat compulsively when I refuse to permit the use of food, and the place already *IS* clean because I, you know, refuse to permit the use of food. Food is verboten. NO SOUP FOR YOU! Because I hate food, so why shouldn't my sims? Believe me, if sims responded to conditioning, they'd learn to hate food, too. I'd smack them everything they tried it. Food bad!

wow - I thought I was the only one that felt that way about these challenges, and if anyone else did I wouldn't expect it to be you :) (afterall, I keep tedious clicking - some of it - because I do believe it's harder).

I tried the asylum challenge. It sounded like fun. It bored me to death. 5 fires but no deaths (my sim was home for them and could easily call the fire trucks). 3 weeks and no one died, although they were in aspiration failure all the time. I was fast-forwarding through all the time my sim was at work (afterall, I couldn't *do* anything so why just sit there?) and all the times I normally do anyway (when she was asleep or skilling) so all I was doing was running the game on fast forward and waiting for earn to earn enough money to be done, while listening to a bunch of other sims cry because they lost aspiration points everytime there was a fire.

I gave up. It was interesting to have had them pair up on their own - one couple fell in love even though they only have one bolt and aren't really suited (and there were other options), so I keep them together. And everyone *except* the knowledge sims maxed out their logic on the chess table. Most of them had a lot of skillpoints on their own at the end.

So some of it was interesting, but I'm never doing that again. If I fast-forward, it's cuz I'm bored, and without something interesting to look forward to, why bother.

It's not quite the same. When I play through a macro, *I* am still in command here. *I* still give the orders. I can intervene at anytime I choose should I disapprove of the action being chosen, either by hitting quit and firing up SimPE to reprogram it, or by manually overriding the decision. To me, the Macro-commands are no different in theory from Free Will commands, except that A: They are intelligently chosen based on actual empirical results and logical priorities (not warped Maxian priorities), B: Carry out their decisions in a timely manner rather than spending 5 minutes gazing at their navels while their motives drain, and C: Are correct decisions. AND I AM STILL IN COMMAND HERE. For a control freak like myself, the sense of being in command of the situation is important. If I'm not able to do something about it, I quickly become disinterested in the problem. After all, I can't affect it, so why should I care? It's someone else's problem now.

"Sit there and do nothing" "challenges", on the other hand, remove me from the game entirely. I'm no longer playing the game. I no longer direct what happens in any form. It's not a game anymore. It thus immediately ceases to hold my attention and I start looking for something else to do. So now I need to close the program to free up resources for that something else.

I started my latest neighbourhood because my first two (both Pleasantview) had become too easy.  I started using the Landlord & Tenant Mod so they had to buy their houses and would therefore have less money (or take longer to get more money), although I've since stopped as it doesn't really work properly for buying. 

I've added various mods that have helped.  One of them is Ste's mod which makes the A+ harder to get.  Now, an A+ is an exception in my neighbourhood rather than an automatic thing.  I only have a handful of Sims who've got them and they really do have to work for them.  The only drawback with it is that it means they have to skill more, which makes things easier later on, but I don't push that anyway.  Most families have the autonomous study bookcases and whereas the more serious kids will start studying the second they transition from toddler, the more playful ones don't go anywhere near them.  This is how it is in real life, so that's how I let it be in the game.  I have one kid with 10 in Playful who went straight to the piano when she transitioned to child and within a few day she'd maxed-out her Creativity (which was at 0 when she started as the Baby Controller won't let them learn it as toddlers).  I had to force her off it the first time to go to bed and by then she was on level 4 or 5 as I recall.  She is one of the few kids in my neighbourhood who reguarly gets an A+, because she's maxed-out the skill that goes with her personality.  I also have kids who get D's because they just aren't doing what they need to do.

I've been very sparing with smart milk, too.  I didn't use it all for my first generation born-ins, mainly because I was no longer cheating to obtain it and none of the parents could afford it.  I have just the one Sim who is 'stuck' at the moment and it's quite an interesting scenario.  His parents are both Pleasure Sims (his father is Fricorith Tricou), as is his elder sister.  He, on the other hand, is extremely serious (only 2 in Playful) and all he does in his spare-time is autonomously study.  He has 'stuck smart milk' and as a result has very high skills now he's just transitioned to teen.  He's totally different in personality to the rest of the family (no doubt due to the Randomise Sim Generator) and I'm sure they must wonder where the hell they got him from.  He gets A+'s all the time, but it isn't difficult as he'd almost maxed-out his Logic when he was a toddler.  I see him as my 'neighbourhood genius' and to keep that going I will probably hit the "Make Me Smart" button on the LotDebugger once he goes to Uni, because once a genius is always a genius in my book.  Yes, that's cheating, but it's calculated cheating, not willy-nilly for the sake of it.  If he never left home he'd stay 'stuck' and it makes no sense that he should become less intelligent just because he's gone to Uni.  Once he's maxed-out his skills (which he will), I may get him to sell some to the Reaper (another mod, LizzLove's I think) so he can start all over again.

I also used to find that more or less all my students graduated Summa Cum Laude, but now hardly any do.  I think only one has so far and that was a former dormie.  I don't cheat at Uni now, even though it makes it somewhat laborious, because otherwise they won't get what they would have got, if you see what I mean.  The ones without sigificant others do much better, because they aren't pre-occupied with the effects of three lightning bolts.  I've also had three of my female YA's get pregnant at Uni and that hasn't helped, either.  None of them ever go on probation, though.  I've had several go to their final exam with their bars in the red and in some cases with two of their 3 skill point subjects short, but they still pass.  The only time they don't is when they're late for the final (regardless of whether the bar is red or not) and I'm sure that before they would be put on probation for being in the red, so maybe some mod is affecting that, I don't know.

I don't use the more expensive npc mod because I use my own Sims to do these jobs (via the ChristianLov NPC mod) which would defeat the object insofar as they would be earning more money than I want them to.  I have one Sim who is the maid for the entire neighbourhood and her husband is the repairman.  The maid also does the gardening, although I do have a few houses that employ a gardener as they don't need the maid due to having residents with very high Hygiene who keep their places clean autonomously.I only have the one gardener, having killed-off the others and put JM's new mod in that stops more being spawned.

Although I don't use the harderjobs mod, I nevertheless follow the rules of it as they suit me.  I started the neighbourhood with the Tricous - Jon Smith was Mayor and Jennicor was Chief of Staff.  They've since died and there is now a new Mayor, who has just turned elder.  He will be replaced by one of my ex-graduate playables who is coming up nicely in the Politics career.  None of my other playables have been allowed to follow that career, although there are several who could hop into it at a high level if the need arose.  I don't have a Chief of Staff at the moment as no one is in that career (my oversight!), neither do I have anyone to replace Captain Hero who has just died (although there are two townie females in the job).

I use Squinge's mod that allows any LTW for any aspiration, together with the one that uses the Uni careers as LTW's and I choose the LTW very carefully.  I look more at their personality and interests than I do at their aspiration.  So, if they are asking to become Master Criminals or Captain Heros but have no interest in crime, it won't happen.  Also, to follow one of the 'one only' careers such as Mayor, they need to fulfil certain criteria.  They must have at least 8 in Outgoing for a start (7 if I was desperate), a bare minimum of 6 in Nice, and preferably be Popularity, plus they must also have at least 8 interest in Politics.  If they don't fit this mould, they can't even study Political Science at Uni even if they want to, because they will never go into the Politics career.  By applying these rules, I have very few prospects for Mayor at any one time.  At the moment, I only have two or three Sims who fit the bill.

I do a lot of things like this and although it doesn't necessarily make the game harder, it makes it a lot more complex and gives me more to think about, which is what I want more than anything.  I spend quite a lot of time working this, that & the other out on paper and I keep all sorts of lists on everything from pregnancies to Inheritance & Earnings (I'm a compulsive list-keeper). 

I no longer cheat with money, I don't boolProp stats anymore, and I no longer cheat Death.  If no one is around to plead, they die, unless they're pregnant, that's my only exception, nore do I reload if the pleading fails (as it has on one occasion so far).  Nor do I 'obtain' the means to resurrect them unless it's legit.  Several Sims have lost their partners as a resut of this, but it makes the game more interesting.  They've all managed to find someone else anyway, so I don't think they're too bothered, and at least I have some adult ghosts around instead of all the old fogeys.

True, you are still in control. I just think it makes the game easier. Having to deal with the consequences of stupid decisions sims make and all adds to the challenge for me. Even having to pick up a flamingo inbetween kicks (though actually I mostly quit using these at all as too easy) means it takes longer to build fun and if all I have is a few minutes before they go to work, I can't always max it out - my fingers are slower than your program, or I might get distracted.

Though I do use the ones that are just unbearable for me - I can't live without the phone hack either. I'm not answering the stupid thing and I'm not going to sit around and just listen to it. And faster cashier - come on, sure it's harder if you make them suffer through learning it, but it's unbearably tedious too. And a lot of others.

Anyway, yeah I don't want to just sit there and watch the sims like they were tv. If there's enough of a strategy involved, that'd keep my interest, but not if the vast amount of the time is just waiting to see what happens.

Have you looked at the Apocolypse Challenge? That looks like fun, though I'm not sure I have the staying power for it. Looks like it'd take awhile:

http://www.legacychallenge.com/apocalypsenolc.html

Still in control though - and it only disallows mods that give an advantage so that's open to interpretation where yours are concerned :)

How do you make Uni harder? I don't believe I "cheat" in any way--no money, skill, or grade hacks--although I do direct them (I don't use "Rampage" because all they seem to do is waste time and drink espresso). I have one global hack that makes reading more fun--the way reading actually is for me and most people I associate with--but since TVs annoy me (I'm very noise sensitive) I think that's reasonable. They still have the stereo, pool table, various musical instruments, and chess for fun.

I am playing one dorm with eight controllables. To add variety I altered the years the initial batch were in. That made it a bit harder for some sims--the seniors who had been freshmen had to skill like mad to get caught up--but they all still pulled summa. What are you doing that I'm not? Or vice versa!


This mod lets playable sims get jobs as maids and gardeners? That would be awesome! Where can I find it?

I know the phone hack has made Simming so much easier. Yeah, it takes away the annoying, useless phone call at 4pm when someone feels they're being neglected, but the ease at which friendships and relationships can be maintained with "Call Friends" is astounding. I was easily able to fill the 'Have 30 Best Friends' want because of this hack.

As another general note, to make things harder, don't allow yourself to use any career rewards. There's a handful of those that make skilling astoundingly easy.

Call Friends is a functionality of AutoYak, and it only APPEARS to make things easier. You could queue all those calls yourself if you want, but constantly choosing who to call next is annoying and the dialogs are very disruptive. This just automatically picks someone to be next for you.

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=62777

I would love to see uni grades actually be grades. I mean, just because you write the term paper doesn't mean you get an A. It might be a pile of shit. I think a full grade meter should mean you pass, but a grade should be related to, I dunno, actual skills or intelligence (not that sims have any).

Boy, you can tell I don't want to go back to college tomorrow, eh?

I think harder jobs is a great hack. Getting rid of smart milk would make the game harder, too.

You don't really need to "get rid of" smart milk, it's an item you aren't required to purchase.

True that, and speaking back to the skills/intelligence == grades bit..  Meh.

In a way, it does sort of work like that, since really, it's the player who decides just how smart any given sim is.  If left to default maxian anti-logic, they're about as sharp as a spoon.  We direct them in order that they do show some minor signs of intelligence (or we use JM's awesome and shiny macros that just make the stupid sim do what we'd otherwise be micro-managing them to do in the first place).

Their skills do play some part however.  There's a hidden homework skill that comes into play to a degree, and of course personality traits can mean a large difference as well.  Take two sims.  Make one a pleasure or romance or whatever sim and let 'em be on the lazy but outgoing side.  Have the other a knowledge sim that leans towars a more active but introverted (shy) persona.

If you leave them completely alone, they'll both flunk out, granted.  But without going out of your way to fix things, you'll have an easier time of keeping good grades on the knowledge sim while still not letting them die out of sheer misery than the other.

Sure, it's not ideal, but it does play some part...  Though admittedly, a comprehensive mod similar to the romance mod that actually made sims autonomy reflect their likes and interests and skills and personas and whatnot would be very awesome and shiny indeed.  Frankly, I tend to think such a project would be incredibly daunting however, and possibly even impossible within the limitations of the hard code.

Good thing we have macrotastics.  ;)

-Kitt

The homework skill isn't really hidden. If your sim has the "learned to study" memory, he has the homework skill and completes homeworks at twice the rate. Otherwise he doesn't. A CAS YA can acquire this skill only during the first semester, after which it becomes impossible to get.

Well, that's obvious: Any active sim ALWAYS outperforms ANY lazy sim in basically any situation, simply because in order to take any action, you need energy, and you need to be able to get there. Since it takes a lazy sim several hours to reach a place an active sim can reach in only a few minutes, anything which requires that your sim go anywhere will take forever on any lazy sim. All other personality factor are nearly entirely irrelevant, active is the key to everything.

Aye.  True enough.

I wasn't aware of the exact mechanics of the homework skill, though admittedly my bits about other factors was probably a bit of a stretch.

Again... sims who actually behaved a bit more like their various scores and stats would be shiny, but getting them to do it in such an encompassing capacity would be incredibly daunting and time consuming to say the very least.

I'll stick to macrotastics rather than even dream of holding out for it.  ;D

-Kitt

No they won't. Unless you put them in situations where they can't, or they're miserable all the time, they'll go to class, and going to class fills the meter up enough they won't just flunk out. They'll occasionally do homework autonomously too, so some of them will do decently. They just won't write their term papers, which doesn't really matter all that much unless you want good grades.

I have tested that before, and my Sims typically graduate Cum Laude or even Summa Cum Laude if left alone during uni, provided they have enough skills to fill the performance meter (which all my playables have due to the long child/teen skilling period).
The autonomous going to class and assignment making ensures a good grade, since nothing except bad interactions with professors or missing final exams will lower the grade.

Uni is absolutely no challenge. The only Sims of mine that flunk are those I play to do so.

I've always wanted a mod that halves the benefits of all grade increasing elements of Uni.  The amount of time and effort it takes my sims to completely fill their grade meter seems to be about the same amount of time I think they should realistically pass the class with, and filling it entirely would actually be hard on Sims that like to party, at least for me.

I wasn't aware that CAS  YAs can develop the home work skill.  How is it done?  By asking for help with an assignment?  Or by having another sim tutor them?

Both of those work.  It takes 1 1/2 assignments with help for a YA to learn to study.

Cool!  I've learned something new. :)

Note that this is normally only possible first semester, after which the option to try to get tutored disappears entirely.

I thought the only time in which it disappears is when the person who offers to tutor has a lower GPA then the person whos being tutored.

To be tutored, you need to have a lower GPA than your tutor does. Since you don't get a GPA until the end of your first semester, you can be tutored, no matter how well or badly you're doing. However, since you're almost certainly getting perfect scores, once the first semester is over, you can't find a tutor with a better GPA than you, therefore you can't be taught.
If you've got a GPA of 4 and you still want to be tutored, the only way would be if you didn't get a perfect score one semester (thus reducing your GPA below 4) and you are then eligible for tutoring. However, your GPA will now suck and you'll never graduate with top grades. Bad move - your sim will be forever relegated to second-class citizen status and all the other sims will laugh at him. Or something ;)

I actually tried this today. I am wondering... would you be able to ask college profs for tutoring even if you still have a great GPA? I had never noticedt his before until recently. I could have sworn that, one time I clicked on a prof and it had a ask for tutoring option or what not. Or at least I thought so. I didn't think anything of it at the time.

However, last night, while I was playing, I called a prof over just for the heck of it and try it out, just to see what would happen. I clicked on the prof, but no option showed up. So... maybe I imagined it. But when I clicked on my assignment, the ask for help/be tutored option did show up. In my previous gameplay experience, before I rebooted my hood, I had never seen this option before. I guess this is because I had only done assignments usually via the College.../Do Assignment option or using influence. And I rarely ever needed to click on the assignment itself unless my sim stopped doing it because of a drop in their fun meter. This time, it was my sims first semester. When I get a chance, I'm going to check my other sims who have progressed further.

Quick question tho... this memory is basically the same as the learned how to study memory right? So... I guess sims who started in the regular hood wouldn't get a second memory of it if they already had it? And... does being tutored increase the speed of doing an assignment as it does with homework?

Ste

Nope, you cant learn to study twice  :P (Unless you forget....but thats just weird)


I think so, but all of my sims learn to study, so i dont notice a difference.

I thought the sim tutoring just had to be higher grade than the one being tutored. Or if they aren't higher, then maybe a better student? I dunno, usually only my playables tutor someone else and they tend to have good grades, so maybe I just didn't realize. I've never bothered to set a knowledge sim up going to the library and getting money to tutor the townies, but it could be a fun thing to do.

Also some things work differently/better if they're in the same major - I didn't realize for the longest time that research together was different if they're in the same major and they can have conversations about it and stuff.

Yes learning to study is exactly the same for kids, teens, and young adults and the faster work rate is the same. It's the same memory and you can't get it twice.

They have to have a better GPA, and the tutoring option is completely unavailable if the learn-ee already has max GPA, both explicitly, and because you obviously can't get better than a perfect score. But since you ALWAYS get one, unless you deliberately shoot yourself in the foot, for all practical purposes, it can't happen after first semester.

It's news to me that asking a professor for tutoring might actually accomplish anything. I tried it for the first time recently; tutoring item came up in the queue, it seemed to be executed when my sim talked to the professor and professor seemed pleased...and that was it. I just wrote it off as a socializing interaction, another way of buttering up the faculty.

Mmm...butter...

I think that clicking on a prof to ask for tutoring is different from asking to be tutored on an assignment.  Clicking on the prof gives a small boost to the grade meter, which I use sometimes if their relationship is already maxed, but the meter isn't full.  Normally, my popularity and romance sims fill up their grade meters as much as they can by socialising with their profs first.

Matter of fact, even woohooing the prof doesn't boost the meter much if they already have a great relationship.  Is it supposed to be this way?