More Awesome Than You!

With most traits for both sims and pets there can at least be some point seen in each end of the spectrum, but the genius-doofus spectrum seems a little silly.  I don't see any reason not to want fast learning in all my pets, so is there any counterbalancing benefit to being a doofus or is this just proof in concept that any innate "smarts" stat for a sim is a stupid idea?

Also, before I start an extensive retraining regiment, is it possible for a pet to learn the commands for both ends of learned behaviors, or are the learned behavior commands linked to the extreme scores?

I think they're one end or the other...

In real life, the doofus pets are often quite adorable.

Doofus pets in real life are to stupid to feel pain or react. They're like Bart Simpsons dog when he throws the frisbee and it hits Santa upside the head, but he doesn't react. those are the safest to kick in the head because they are already dumb as dirt; there's nothing else to lose upstairs.

Doofus pets do funny things and have a higher entertainment value than genius pets, who are (almost) always well behaved. 

Doesn't really take that much longer to train a doofus.

I believe the genius pets learn 25% faster than the doofus ones.  This is real noticeable in cats since they take longer to train than dogs.  Which is beginning to irritate me a little.

You could argue that dogs learning faster than cats is realistic I guess.  But I prefer to think that Maxis/EA are a bunch of KITTY HATERS!!!

It's not that cats are slower at learning, it just takes them longer to decide to give a damn about what you're trying to teach them.

Yeah, my cat is bloody brilliant, but we've never managed to train her to do anything specific.

Cats just don't really care what you want them to do. Only kind of training they take to on a regular basis is litterbox training.

And even that's only because cats like burying their crap.

And in real life you don't generally teach them to use the litterbox, their mom teaches them.  They see her as much more of an authority figure than you.

ya right, I've had to litterbox train alot of kittens ::)



Anyway, my real cats are great at training, yup they have me very well trained  :D *laughs*

I have four cats, all girls, and each of them very, very different. Two are as smart as paint (the black and white would rule the world if she had opposable thumbs), and the two tabbies are dim and really fuckin' stooopid, respectively. Stoopid girl was freaked at the pattern in my new rug because she thought it was a spider and spiders are her nemesis. Very funny to see in fact, if a bit worrisome.  ::)

I have a sim couple who adopted a doofus cat, and she's pretty funny.  Constantly getting stoned on the catnip mouse and tear-assing around the house.  It's funny to watch...

In my test hood one house has 6 cats and 1 kitten. I really enjoy watching them running around the house and playing with each other and the toys and demanding attention from the sims.

I use christianlov's "Pets Behavior and Command Tool" so all the pets in my test hood "know the rules" and some know all the commands  ;)  although I did mess around with having my sims teach them for abit.

I will most likely continue to "teach" them via hack in my main hood since I wants pets to be an addition to my enjoyment of the game and not an annoyance. Once in a while I will allow a sim to "behavior train" them themsleves. Most "commands" will probably be taught by my sims if my sims have the time.

From what I have seen, there really isn't any difference between smart/normal/stupid pets, which is a shame really  :-\

That's true. I've taught my cat to play fetch with a little, soft ball. She's quite happy to bring it back to me after I throw it about half a dozen times, but then she loses interest.

The thing that bothers me about cat training as far as the game goes is I thought EA could have been a little more imaginative and had different things to teach either cats or dogs and not exactly the same commands for both!

Honestly, I have to say that I've noticed quite a large difference between those personalities, even with my limited experience with pets. However, both pairs had one genius lazy cat while the other was a hyperactive doofus. The latter would run around completely demented while the former would just sit around most of the time.

I did notice a difference between hyperactive and lazy but I think genius/normal/doofus is only noticed when training.  I could be wrong of course *shrugs*

Very good point to bring up...
It would have been nice had they made some silly animations for the doofuses rather than using the same animations and behaviours that all of the dogs in the game have, and just adjusting how often they do them.

I think genius cats are definitely less prone to doing anything than doofus cats. The doofus cat of one family runs around crazily all the time, which is hilarious to watch. The genius cat, on the other hand, rarely does so even though I have attempted to encourage this behavior at every opportunity. Naturally, running around crazily is hilarious.

While we're talking about pet personalities.  Is Aggressiveness the sole determining factor in winning fights?

I don't think is. I had 2 cats with the same personality (almost) except one was smarter. The smart one kicked the stupid one's butt. Then he sulked about it.

praise the genius cat for playfulness and it will do it all the time too, mine do  ;D 

I praise it for running around crazily, does that work?

yes, I've prasied mine for both and now I have 6 genius hyper adult cats that run around like crazy alot (the 7th is only a kitten)

Yeah, I have a genius hyper cat that's always running around crazily, playing with the mouse and bird on a stick thingy and so on. I just encouraged her to be playful whenever she did it initially.

Once they reach maximum playfulness, they gain a crapload of new commands too, like "Play with other pet", "Run around crazily", "Pounce at sim" and so on. Makes getting your pets to be friends easier, because you can just get one to play with the others to get the relationship score up.

I missed that -- thanks for pointing it out!

I just put the pet control and action cancel cheats in my userstartup file.

I rarely direct my pets to do anything (except at first so they will become friends faster) but I like knowing I can tell them what to do when I want to  ;D

Running around crazily was "disruptive". However, having to COMMAND them to run around crazily is very purpose-defeating.

I've got a genious, agressive cat who's got a strong relationship to the female sim of the household. She used to live alone and adopted him (He'sa former stray called Grimalkin, not bad for a game that issues townies called 'Goopy'), then after a while married a male sim.

He can't stand the guy :p He's always pouncing him and trying to eat his food, it's rather hilarious. One of the nicer side-effects of the 'mine' stamp, or just a game coincidence, I don't know, but if this cat was a sim he'd be an Evil Mastermind.

Anyway, while he's a genious he still runs around crazily a lot. As in, almost 70 % of the time. I think that's really got more to do with hyperactive/lazy than with genious/doofus.

Traits don't have to be advantageous to serve a purpose.  They're there to imitate the personality differences that seperate individuals, both human and animal, in real life.  It'd seem pretty lame if every dog or cat acted exactly the same...if they were all smart, or clean, whatever.  Sure, it'd be less of a hassel, but you'd lose all the character that these traits bring.  The variation is amusing.

Grimalkin is Old English for cat (and is actually the name of former cat of mine). So, naturally, my game names a freaking *dog* Grimalkin.   My "yay" quickly turned to a D'oh!

No probs.

I wish I could tell my cat in real life to pounce at people.....oh, the fun we could have.

Discretely anoint the visitors' knees with catnip oil.  You'll see pouncing!

What is the full name of the action cancel one?

I never get it right, and I can't find it when i type "help" either.

boolprop ControlPets on/off

boolprop petActionCancel true/false

My cat never seemed that overjoyed with catnip.....perhaps because she was getting on a bit when we tried it with her.

I think there's a certain percentage of cats who just aren't affected by catnip. Mine all seem to be, though; helps to get them to use the scratching box instead of my bed, phew.