More Awesome Than You!

I've been sporadically playing the Sims 2 again after a long hiatus, and I've been pondering the effects of the expansions.  When I first got them, of course I put them through their paces, but what about their effect in the longer term?

University has a large effect simply due to the extra want slots and the extra lock.  Actually playing college of course is another huge effect on play, though you can get the want benefits without the tedium of playing through another life stage with hacks.  The Uni-related wants are generally not interesting, and I wish the teens wouldn't roll the "go to college" want until they get within 3 days of becoming an adult.

Nightlife gives you cars, garages, and dates.  Oh, and some downtown lots that I find I don't really like.  I think if I were to create a new neighborhood I'd avoid adding a downtown entirely.  Cars and garages are pretty much unneeded, yet I find that I do really appreciate being able to put them into houses.  Prior to NL, I had trouble duplicating real house designs because the garage is usually a significant part of the layout.  Dates I'll do occasionally, but they're so easy they're difficult to make interesting.  Typically I'll hide the wants of the playable sim and open the date's wants, so the date is all about making the target Sim happy.

Open For Business has essentially no effect at all.  I find that I'd rather advance my Sims along the regular career tracks than open a business.  It doesn't help that starting a business is expensive enough that by the time I can afford it, I don't care about money anymore.  I also don't care for the fact that a community-lot business takes no sim-time, unlike the regular jobs.

I don't own pets.  I haven't picked it up because it didn't sound like it added much.  Maybe I'm wrong about that, since clearly if almost every family has a pet, it'd add change normal play significantly, just like caring for a baby or toddler does.  On the other hand, I don't really want a bunch of new useless Wants like the influence wants.

 - Gus

OfB can also give you new interactions, like "Motivational Speech" and "Rally Forth", that raise the Needs of others, although I find they only work on people you're friendly with.

You can also start a home business, which is much cheaper than buying another lot. If you made a home-salon, for instance, your only outlay would be the salon chair and an Open/Close sign. A home business also takes up sim-time.

Ummm.....getting pets does seem to give you a hell of a lot of pet-related Wants....my Sims seem to be bombarded with "Bonkers gets a job in Security", "Give Sigurd a hug" and so on, but that could just be because I have four pets.

Pets tend to be a lot less needy than toddlers, especially cats. Cats you can pretty much leave to do their own thing, aside from feeding.

Here, here!

It really is more effort than it's worth when you can just have a couple sims have day jobs and and end up with more than enough money, what with promotions and chance cards and all.

The only benefit that I can see, is for people who might like the stopping of time on community lots, so they can rustle up a bunch of money in one shot, so their sims don't need jobs and have tons of time to goof off all the rest of the time.

As far as gameplay goes, it's definitely the least interesting EP so far.  If you don't have any pets in the family you're playing you might as well not have the game installed.  There is the wolf and werewolf spam knowlege sims tend to get, but on a lot with no trees you'll hardly ever see the wolf, and if you ignore it when it comes you won't have any lychantropy trouble.
What you will get is hovering children, flashing blue accessories, unfulfillable "buy karaokemachine" wants, all features of maxis themselves, and if you're silly enough to use the wrong version of InSim you'll get dogs pissing microwaves.

Pets...  yeah, largely adds pets.  If you're not looking for the whole pet experience, probably the best thing they add are the wormrat and bird, which can be nice without being as needy.  But even with the new cheats and build mode tools (basically, you get a lot of stuff to help you tear down or set up a lot much more quickly), it's not worth the sticker price.  Maybe worth $15-20 once the patch comes out.

Most of OFB's content requires some effort to unlock, as the real meat of the game isn't in the actual business dynamics, but in the things you can get from a business instead.  Business perks can give you some nice new abilities, and craftables can add some interesting new quirks to gameplay.  If you don't mind cheating a teensy bit, you can have one salesman sim who you spoon-feed money and badges to, have them buy a community lot as a general store or mall, and have your other sims buy toys, flowers, and robots there.

NL and Uni, though, you do have pretty much pegged.

The biggest benefit, to me, from OFB is that they cleaned up the game engine and the thing runs BETTER with OFB installed than just the base game or the base game and the other expansions.  I hate Uni and never send my Sims there- the only reason I have it installed is for the objects.  I like running a business and I like the craftables, but even if I didn't, it's worthwhile just how much faster and smoother the game runs.

I find that OFB gives me the least out of all the expansions as far as how I play. I really don't care much about the trying to run a business thing, hate that it screws with the time (in that the time doesn't really exist that it takes a sim to go to a community lot), and I absolutely despise the 'own five top ranked businesses' LTW. I do like the servos along with some of the toys that sims can make. I don't really regret buying the expansion, but it sure wasn't as much of an impact as Uni or NL.

Uni and NL I got very close to one another, so it's a little hard to tell which caused more of an impact on the way I play. Together, I'd say they're the most important expansions.

I get more out of Pets than I do OFB, but that's because the pets can interact on a normal daily basis with the family without taking time out to do something special. They can be integrated pretty well and as long as you remember to feed them (and bathe the dog occasionally) they don't seem too much of an energy drain.

I personally rather like the ownable community lots, myself, although I suppose you could accomplish the same task with a whackload of Jeffistani paintings. But mostly, I like it because of the shiny things I've made for it. If you don't have the shiny things, then yeah, I could see it as "most useless expansion ever", seeing as businesses are basically completely inoperable without Shiny Things.

I recently imposed myself a new set of rules on what I can do or not.
The most important one is the "platinium rule": if a sim is in platinium mood, I play "normally": he does whatever I decide.
If the sim is in gold aspiration, or lower, I must follow its wants (and motives). I can't issue orders that are not in its want pannel.
Of course there are exceptions and special rules. But it anyway made the game harder, and more interesting. This rule contributed to destroy my perfectly ordered, predictable, happy neighborhood of overskilled sims. It's much more fun to play now - and the expansions became really useful.
End of personal note.

You forgot the most important uni addition: the permaplat. With this feature, you never have to satisfy wants... It was a great change from the base game, where wants were very important, and directed the game play.
I like LTWs, but find the reward unbalanced.
It would have been more interesting, I think, if reaching a LTW had given a new want slot...

I rather like OFB because it gives me something to do with all those adults and elders who by halfway through adulthood have maxed all their skills, reached the top of at least one career, had all the kids they're going to have and have more money than they know what to do with. Pets I will use in much the same way - useless elders can spend their time teaching pets, rather than just being ignored until they do something stupid.

I'm personally a cat person, and now and then I've thought about getting Pets just to get a few cats, but I'm more reflecting on how much the expansions really change normal play if you're not focusing on the new features.  My impression is that the pets don't change the game that much, but they do change normal play more than OFB does.

I guess I'll have to look at the business perks again, because I've forgotten them.  The craftables didn't turn out to be nearly as interesting as I thought they would be.  I won't touch the snapdragons because I think they're a huge cheat, and the robots mostly don't do anything useful.  Servo is sort-of useful, but he's really not a lot different from just creating another Sim and moving them in.

I have a robot store in my neighborhood, but for the most part I never bother to go there because I don't want to buy any of them.

I absolutely hate Permaplat, because the only thing I find interesting about playing most Sims is messing with their Wants.  While it was working, I used the "semi-permaplat" hack which made the LTW flag just reduce aspiration meter decay.  These days I just use the lot debugger to turn the LTW flag back off the moment a Sim fills a LTW.

 - Gus

I love OFB but it's just because to me the sims is really about telling stories - it's just a huge dollhouse. If you've ever read Harriet the Spy, the sims is the ultimate expression of the town game she plays. OFB means I can simulate so much more - can set up a detective agency and solve murder mysteries or have the father get sick of business life (designing toys for cereal boxes) and subsistance farm in the middle of the city instead, or whatever.

Personally, I think Uni ruined the game. Perm Plat takes away the need to satisfy wants. The part I think I dislike most about Uni is that a graduate can "harvest" the career rewards. In the base game you actually had to work for them.

I'd rather see graduates only get high level entrance into their degree field, everything else they start off normal. The LTW for Perm Plat are ridiulously easy with graduates - there should perhaps be a two tiered system, one for people who don;t go to Uni & one for the grads - or - maybe I should just uninstall Uni, but then I'd lose a lot of content.

I dislike the fact that the new careers are not addressed as LTWs & EA lying about why they didn't implement it. Supposedly they didn't want to force people to go to college, but, now there are new Pet & Business related LTWs? What about the people who don't want to start 5 businesses? or have 20+ pets? They are being "forced" to complete those goals.

Sounds like you need Pescado's 'harderjobs' hack, which keeps grads from starting near the top of their career (but they still start higher than non-grads). Considering your other complaints/dislikes, you should probably check out his whole Director's Cut of hacks, which overall change the gameplay to be more sane.

The difference is that any sim can, at any time they chose to, start a business or buy a pet.  The player may not be that interested in a given EP's features, but at least nothing's stopping them if they feel so inclined.

The regular career LTW's (and possibly the child based ones, I don't remember how adoption plays into things) can become unattainable when your sim hits elder.  Which I guess is a bad way to go about things, but in practice unless you specifically don't want your sim to achieve their LTW, it's hard not to top off a career before then.

Uni careers, OTOH, are unavailable to all CAS adults and any natural sims you decided not to push through university.  Furthermore, as pre Renu-U aspirations were set in stone before graduation status was determined, Maxis decided not to risk shafting a good number of sims with permanently unattainable LTW's.  Things would probably be different if the aspiration change orb were available pre-Uni, or if EA were to put out a "cleaning up after ourselves" EP, but the first is counterfactual and the second woukld require stability to sell better than flash.

Hi :)

I understand that CAS sims you introduce to the game as Adults can't get Uni jobs, but, surely they could have coded the game to check for this. Any sim born in the game has the opportunity to persue a Uni LTW or not. The LTW is determined when the sim transitions to teen, so there is ample opportunity to send that sim to Uni if that's what their LTW is or not just as you can choose to start a business or not or do the 20 pets or not. Players may not be interested in persuing it but it should have been an option.

The only problem is for the CAS introduced adults & honestly, they could have coded the game to check for this.

I'm not sure I understand you point about the pre-Uni adults. Their LTWs were already set & adults can't go to Uni so i don't see how that affects anything. How would having the Orb available sooner have made any difference? Sorry, maybe I'm just being dense atm.

Pre-Uni Sim do not have LTWs, LTWs are new to Uni! They get a randomly rolled one. Upgrading a base game 'hood to Uni (or later of course) will result in differences in the given LTWs, especially if you don't have Pescado's sanity fixes.

There are many ways EAMaxis could have done it so existing adults who never went to Uni never got an ineligible LTW, but instead they opted to remove the LTWs completely.

Squinge has a mod which adds LTWs for the four uni careers, but as it requires altering base game files it is patch- and mulitple accounts-unfriendly.

Is there any chance that a less invasive^* "unlocking of the LTWs" patch/hack or whatever may be available some time in the future? It is pointless to put a sim on a career track that is not going to help them achieve a life goal.



^*Read: More Awesome and who is "Squinge"? For too long I thought "Squinge" was just another name for "Inge", but I have since noticed that they are actually different people. Is he a rival of Inge or a "squeeze" of Inge? Will I find this information if I just keep quiet and continue reading? Can you give me a hint?

Squinge is one of the most productive modders. He will do just about everything you request. Squinge's forum (http://www.insimenator.net/forumdisplay.php?f=151).

While his mods tend to do exactly what he says and work quite well, many of them conflict with other mods (including mods made by himself!), and you cannot just get them all. I use about 20 of his mods carefully selected myself.

New LTWs mod (http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=26700)

Sims who were created pre-uni really don't factor into this discussion; as soon as the EP is added, they're treated as if they were CAS sims.

Even assuming that the game did reserve unicareer LTW's for "eligible" sims (ones born in game, or ones created at YA or younger), you have to keep in mind that at the time of Uni, there were three times aspiration (and as such LTW) could be set.  They could be set at creation (if the sim were a teen or older), at the moment a born in game sim ages to teenager, or at the end of a sim's sophomore year of college.  Ignoring adults and elders as ineligible for the moment, the latest a sim's LTW could be set would be while they were still in college.  And while in practice the hardest part about university is putting up with the boredeom, in theory the game has to account for sims who either fail/drop out (thus stuck with an unfufillable LTW for the rest of their lives), or else simply chose not to go to college (ditto).  This as opposed to raising a pet or starting a business, which any sim can do unless dead.  So even if the game were set up to check for unicareer eligibility, at the time the unicareers and whole college mechanic were released there was no way to guarantee that a sim with one would be eligible; the last chance to reroll a crummy LTW was long gone by the time a sim's graduation status was set.

The way an earlier orb would change things would be that if the renu-u orb existed pre-Uni, it would be trivial to change aspiration at any point, and as such to reroll an unwanted LTW.  If adults/elders could pick up a new LTW through reasonable means, it would be much more reasonable for the unicareers to exist as special LTW's that needed to pass a check, as again there would exist sims who were rolling new LTW's and who were clearly graduates.  But as of the time of Uni, the only way to reroll a LTW after one became an unequivocally graduated adult was to satisfy your prior LTW, and while Maxis did cut a corner there, you have to admit there's less reason to care about secondary and later LTW's once permaplat is already in play.

Do the game creators care in any way if a LTW is fulfillable?
I've had a family Servo who wanted to celebrate his Golden Anniversary.  Is that possible for someone who will never be an elder?

Plenty of sims are stuck with an unattainable LTW whether they went to college or not. What about all those pre-uni elders who suddenly want to be Criminal Masterminds? Prior to LTW variety, etc, they were just out of luck.

That doesn't seem to be a good reason why they can't aspire to reach the tops of the uni careers.

It also isn't reasonable to expect that anyone with no higher education can become a Mad Scientist or Chief of Staff, but you must attend college in order to become a movie star or a psychic phone pal (whatever the top of that career is).

I don't mind taking several steps to put a hack in, but I am concerned about the process of updating the EP. The removal and clean up prior to updating the EP seems to require multiple steps and probably needs concentration.

I feel that Uni and NL provides the meat and bones to my game currently.  Uni provided some rather useful things, as did NL.  But if I had to choose between the two I'd take NL over Uni anyday.  Uni needs NL to really shine.  Its a one sided symbiosis between those two.

For OFB, I usually choose three families in the hood to open up businesses based on the three types of crafts (floral, toys, robotics) and let them supply the rest of the hood with them.  Then I usually forget about businesses all together.  Unless of course I have a permaplat sim with all skills maxed that I'm bored out of my mind with.  Then I'll make them open up a book store of car dealership or something.

As for Petz.  I see no real usefulness to it yet.  Diagonal roofs are nice I suppose.  About the only thing I really like in this ep is the monorail you can put in your hoods as a decoration.  Fitting one in between the two main roads in Strangetown is a pain in the ass however.  But doable with a steady hand and patience.

The college part of Uni is EA Games' forgotten stepchild. It hasn't seen any changes since Uni, and none of its improvements (synchronous time [sort of]), a CAS with individual last names, rental homes, etc., have made it to the basic game play.

Pets is a builder's dream. Rotatable floor tiles (no more "bathroom tiles" which are sideways), diagonal and octagonal room building in one go, diagonal roofs, individual roof slopes, etc.. I love those.

What's your reasoning?  Groups?  The two don't seem to have much synergy otherwise to me, but I agree that it's good that you can take more than one person in the dorm to the library without having to take everyone.

 - Gus

That, and the simple fact that YA's are no longer confined to the Uni campus when you want to go to a community lot.  I felt such a sense of freedom when I installed NL.  Back in the TS2 + Uni days the only real way for Adult sims to meet YA sims was to chat on a computer.  And that was hit or miss.  Now the YA's can just go to a downtown lot and hang out with the adult sims.  Or meet them through the Matchmaker NPC.

Of course, its not perfect.  Adult sims can't go and visit a Uni community lot unless invited by a YA. 

The thing I like best about Pets, strangely enough, is the new loading music. I hated the previous, semi-electric, annoyingly boppy ones.

Pets for me personally is the best expansion yet. I don't play TS2 that much, but I do like to fiddle around with some of its more interesting aspects, like trying to make custom content, models, and now pets. You probably have to be as wacky as me to love the fantastic amount of customising you can put into your pets. I've spent hours just seeing what I can do with all the options.

That hadn't crossed my radar.  In my games, I've only tried to get my YA sims to meet other YA sims.  Though I do end up with relationships between adults and YAs when the adults graduate and I don't bother to play Uni for a while.

 - Gus

I've been using squinge's hack for uni LTWs for a while now...  I've also installed both stuff packs with it still in and encountered no problems...  maybe just lucky, but it's not really been an issue for me.  I've also tended to install over the top of my neighbourhood camera mod with no problems as well... I tend to forget that it's in until I go to play and discover it gone.

You likely won't run into problems, he knows what he's doing. But since it necessitates changing a core game file the sheeple will probably end up destroying their game, and you tend to run into problems patching.
Not Squinge's fault, but still one reason I hesitate recommending this mod to newbies.

I added OFB to base game - it was the first one that looked to me like the gameplay was going to be interesting.  It has been so far, but getting one to level 10 is a big chore, never mind 5.  Career wants are much easier!  Adding OFB to base game only affected my basic non-business gameplay seriously in a couple of ways; inventory and LTWs.    LTWs are a mixed blessing because I didn't get the full set of LTWs and because many of my sims were well down the track in the "wrong" career, so most of my adults are stuck with career wants for another career unless I cheat and re-roll and most of my elders are stuck with unattainable or no wants depending on whether Saner LTW hack is in or out of my game.  >:(  I've only got 1 sim to Permaplat, but I know it's going to make life too easy.  I also got inventory and attraction.  Influence isn't much use unless you have a large unkempt garden and influence wants are just irritating.  Attraction doesn't make a big difference as you can make any two sims fall in love anyway.

Snapdragons are a huge cheat, but given how irritating running a business can be, I don't feel too bad using them in a shop.  I've only had one family use them - single dad + 4 kids & teen created in CAS.  I found them in his inventory and couldn't resist... - the homework pile was getting too big!

Wasn't the game engine reworked in Nightlife?  I read that here somewhere way back when NL came out. Anyway I appreciated the improvement when I added OFB to base game. 

re the monorail in Strangetown - I have another use for that space - I made a string of of 3+1 buinesses to fit in the middle of that main road instead.  Rather downmarket places like Bertha's bedding plants, Benny's Bar, Hero's Hair etc etc 


Starting a business on a community lot isn't expensive - buy a small empty lot and start from there.  take stuff from home in your inventory like chairs, the expresso machine etc and improve the lot itself when you can afford it.  A virtually barren lot won't earn a good review, never mind win a best of the best award, but it works just fine at making money and you can get one up to level 10.  I have made a lot of starter businesses - the desert versions went into my Sedona default hood.  I've got green versions of some of them, but they aren't uploaded anywhere yet.

NL brought some huge improvements, such as the visible neighbours....

I really like the visible neighbours.  My willow walk neighbourhood has a nice feel to it now, even if the "river" doesn't join up from lot to lot. 

Inventory made a big difference to me - was that Uni or NL?

Nightlife.

NL also gave us the new taxi destination menu, in base game and base+uni you would be returned to the neighbourhood screen and then click on a lot to visit (like in TS1). Now we get the list.

The menu makes load times much saner when visiting community/downtown lots, but at the same time, I sometimes miss the neighborhood view. I'm very visual, so sometimes it's easier to see what the place looks like rather than try and remember based on the name.

Winning best of the best is easy. There's a simple, formulaic way of practically guaranteeing it. Get a lot with one item. Price it at "beyond ridiculously expensive", so that it won't sell. Then show it to the reporter, and when he begins browsing that, start spamming hard sell on him repeatedly. As long he accepts it, just keep hammering and raking in stars. When you hit 5 stars, let him go. Voila. Best of the best. Like napalming fish in a barrel.

I'm not sure about this, but I seem to remember not selecting a target on the menu once, just selecting neigbourhood and clicking check, and then getting the old neigbourhood "pick a lot" screen.

Yup, pre-NL worked that way.

That must be what I did a couple of weeks ago then.  Its been so long since I've seen that screen.  And it was so bizarre I took a shot of it.

(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y110/chipmc/wtf.jpg)

I'm pretty certain this was post Petz too.

I had to test it: It does work.
If you don't pick a lot, just the neigbourhood from the menu, you get the old style map.
(http://pics.livejournal.com/gwillewyn/pic/00048ews)
I took this screenshot just now, with all EPs installed.

Cool! I did not know that... thanks a million.

Wow! That is cool. I didn't realize that, so thanks guys.

Hi :)

I just wanted to say thanks for the suggestions about harderjobs & Squinge's extra lifetime wants. I've installed harderjobs & it's much, much better! I hated it when they came home from wotk the first day with $20,000 because of the bonuses - it took the challenge of "starting out' out of the game. Now they have to suffer :) YAY!

Haven't got the LTW wants installed yet, but I'll be doing that too.

Thanks!

I've got two options on my phone menu - transport and taxi.  One of them always takes me to the hood screen to choose, the other lets me pick a lot and go straight there.  That's with OFB.  don't they both still exist with Pets?

Never saw that in NL, OFB or since, so it might be something hack-related (either in your game or mine :)).  I've always seen the list regardless of which taxi item was chosen.

I think one of those is coming from an old version of the phonehack, so you might want to back up your copy and try a new one.

I'm late to this but:


Hrm... and this isn't taken care of by the ltwvariety hack? If not, I think a small update would be appreciated. In that case, vampire, zombies, servos (and werewolves?) shouldn't roll up wants that depend on aging to elder. How do those all work anyways? If a sim dies and gets resurrected as a zombie or if they get turned into a vamp or werewolf, do they still age? Or are they stuck at the age that they became a zombie, vamp, or werewolf?

I assume all servos are at the "adult" life stage permanently. I think vamps and zombies probably don't age? I wasn't sure about werewolves, but I imagine in typical fantasy/horror lore, werewolves still age, but I don't know if Maxis EA sticks to that.



Actually... I vaguely recall, the first time I installed ZOMGPETZ, I forgot to remove my hacked Wants folder and I'm pretty sure the EP installed without complaining about it. Heh. Sure there's an extra step with regard to maintenance and updating/compatability, but I think the Uni Enabled LTW hack is essential. At least for my game. I really wish Maxis EA would just get off their damned lazy ass butts and fix this so we can have them without a hack. Obviously, if a modder was able to enable this, it should be really easy for them to just include it already. As has been pointed out, there are already several other situations where sims can get stuck with an unfulfillable LTW. I actually think that is pretty realistic, since in real life, there are many lifetime goals that some people never achieve. Life sucks, then you get raped by wild boars, and then you die. No shiny platinum grave for you. :P

Anyhew... the ironical thing is... even with the Uni Enabled LTWs, I think ltwvariety seems to force all of my sims to have the same generic LTWs. All of my Knowledge sims tend to get the Maximize 7 Skills, and all of my Romance sims get the have 20 lovers or woohoo with 20 lovers, and all my Popularity sims get the have 20 best friends LTWs. I guess my sims all just sadorandomly happen to have limited interests such that they tend to not get career related LTWs. I know I could easily re-roll the LTWs, but I feel that should come at some kind of cost to my sim. It would have been nice if the Renuyu Orb thingy had an option to just re-roll the LTW without necessarily changing Aspiration. Actually... now that I think of it... I guess I could use it to change aspiration and then just pick the same aspiration. Does it even allow you to do that? Heh, I don't remember... hrm... maybe next time I'll try it.

Also... thanks all for the info about the choose neighborhood transportation thingie. I also missed that from TS1 and I am also very visual. I can't just remember what lot has what, especially the Downtown lots, just by name. So this will be very helpful. :)

Ste

I also think the extra Uni career LTWs are essential, but mainly my issue revolves around my own housekeeping.  I don't think I'm alone in this, judging by the number of posts involving forgotten hacks.  I have many essential hacks, and the best are, of course, transparent.  So transparent that I forget I have them in my game.  Most of my hacks are from MATY, not because I'm such a fangirl (in fact, my play-style tends to chafe at JMPs military efficiency), but because his military efficiency demands hacks that play nice together, and are easy to maintain.  When I update an EP, I back up, and go to 2 or 3 sites to update my hacks.  I would notice that I have a hack by Squinge, but I probably wouldn't remember that it requires special treatment.  Until of course, I have a problem, and then we all know what a pain it is to sift through CC.

I don't have a lot of time to play, so I put a penalty on hacks and CC that add to my time managing/troubleshooting them.


Yup, except for teens who can be aged to YA and then adult, by sending them to college and bringing them back.

Unfortunately, not changing aspiration when you use the orb doesn't do a thing to your LTW.  In fact, not changing anything with it doesn't even suck out a charge.  (I'm not sure how this would work with a cheese sim getting another failure, but I do know it allows you to chain-renu a red or green sim until they're properly cheesified.)  I used to use the orb to change out and back as an aspiration reroll, but that quickly devolved into memory spam.  If you're really looking for a temporary workaround, buy a cheap something like the money tree and delete it for each lot debugger reroll you use.

A button to re-randomize your LTW without other effects of the orb would be nice.  (As would uni-enabled LTW's, more generic LTW's in general, and a whole host of other features.)  But doing so would require EA to actually tinker with concepts from older EP's, which doesn't seem like something they seem interested in doing.

I have noticed this also. My Knowledge sims almost exclusively roll "max 7 skills" or "be mad scientist". I cannot remember the last time someone actually wanted to be a doctor or anything else. I use the "batman box" to cycle through LTWs, but still get only those two for Knowledge and only rarely get a career want for a pop, romance or family sim. I have used the "aspiration adjustor" to try to get something different, but I usually only use that to change turn ons/off.


That is just what I am worried about too. I am going to have to think and worry about this a great deal to have any assurance that I will remember that it requires special treatment when the time comes. Until I have burned this idea into my daily thoughts I don't want to risk it... But I do take courage from Ste when he said,


But I am still going to have to think about this for quite a while before I am willing to take the chance. I really want my sims to be able to pursue careers in the uni fields, but... I am going to have to make this a long-term memory before I actually commit to it.


This would be covered by the ltw variety hack that I use along with macrotastics. It is very useful under most circumstances.

BTW, is the link to the Squinge hack for Uni LTWs in this thread somewhere?

Hrm... does the LTW change if you use the orb thingy to change turn ons/offs? Or does the LTW only change if you actually change the aspiration? If I'm not too lazy... :P maybe I'll look into adding the re-roll LTW option to the orb so it actually deducts aspiration points.



Well, the LTW variety hack is great for making interests a requirement, but it doesn't actually enable re-rolling itself. At least, not that I'm aware of. I believe the ffslotdebugger and I think the twojeffian college adjuster allows LTW re-rolling without the orby affects. I certainly don't want memory spam from the orb thingy. I totally forgot about that. Does the orb thingy give you memories if you just change the turn ons/offs?



You can find Squinge's hack here (http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=11631) and he updated it for Pets here (http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=26700). :)

Ste

If you change aspiration in the orb the Sim gets a memory s/he did so. LTW only changes if aspiration was changed.

Yes, sorry, that is what I meant. I use the ffs lotdebugger to reroll or cycle ltw variety. I believe the orb thingy gives you memories every time you use it. I haven't used it since I got the debugger for ltw and I use InSIM's aspiration bit for the turn ons/off.


Thanks so much, Ste.