From the Manage Households window, click on a playable household, and there should be a stupid little plumbob in the bottom left.
Clicking on it makes the house unplayable.
No clue why they didn't put it with the other buttons along the bottom.

Dammit, I wish you had told me that before I had 6 kids so I could paint portraits of all of them!

Although seriously, if I am just going to play the game how I want, it's not much of a challenge.  I like to have a goal of some sort, and keeping score gives me a goal.  The problem is that the score-keeping scheme that Pinstar has devised encourages ridiculous things like having a ton of children just so you can paint portraits of them.  Portraits are stupid!

I guess I could make my own scoring criteria, but then it wouldn't be Legacy Challenge.  If I go around telling people what happened to my third generation in Dinadan Challenge, nobody would have any clue what I'm talking about.

I guess the only solution is not to play Legacy.  I don't want to feel pressured to have a house full of sims at all times just so that I can get as many points as possible.

It's still possible to move a sim in, make a baby with it (thus making the mate eligible to score), painting a portrait of the mate, and then moving the mate out with the baby.  The baby is still part of the bloodline, so it's parent's portrait is worth points even if neither the baby nor the parent stuck around.
This isn't as easy as just popping out babies and painting them, but is still by far the easiest way to earn points.  Frankly, I've always thought the portrait points were kind of stupid.  Why should something that takes practically no effort reward you as much as fulfilling a LTW or earning 100k happiness?

It's not good enough that you have an Awesome config tool to adjust every detail of AwesomeMod.

And it's not good enough because of the colors?

Maybe we need a config tool for the config tool.  Would you be happy then?

I think it's an improvement.

How about this...
Marry whoever the hell you want and just use the AwesomeMod cheat to subtract all of the money that the newcomer brought in.

My first gen married Lisa Bunch.  I'm not sure whether she is rich or not but my sim didn't identify her as such. Her house was worth 90k when I married her, and she brought 5k (I think when she moved in).

In fact, I tried moving in the entire Bunch family.  Since they weren't rich I figured it was allowed and I could get all that money.  Turns out, even if I sold the bunch house and furniture and moved all of them into my family, I still only got 5k for it.

The only thing even remotely micro-managey is the bit about illegally obtained objects.  Just don't make a klepto.

I get that.  It's not the randomness that bothers me, it's the fact that doing "great" is actually worse than doing "okay" simply because of the way it picks.

If you do badly, the game picks a random bad trait for you.
If you do well, the game picks a random good trait for you.
If you do great, the game lets you pick a trait.  If you random it, you are just as likely to end up with a bad trait as a good one.

Do you see the problem here?  You are more likely to end up with a good trait by merely doing well as opposed to doing great.  I think it is stupid for being punished for doing well.  This would actually make sense if the scoring rules gave us some additional incentive to do great as opposed to simply doing well when raising the kids.  Sure, you may fulfill some honor roll wishes and such along the way, but it's probably better to just avoid the honor roll and let it pick a good trait for you so you don't have to random a trait.

Maybe put in a small bonus for actually being prompted to pick a trait, since that indicates that you were doing well.  The score bonus would make up for the fact that being prompted for a trait is more likely to result in a bad trait than simply having the game pick one for you.

Hmm, I didn't know you were forced to take a LTW upon aging to YA, because I always took one as child or teen when it randomly rolled.  So one post suggested that you just end up with one, and one post suggests you get to choose from a list?  Which one is it?  Or is it based on your performance?

Notes on Legacy:

-Having to random a trait without any rerolls is lame. Do badly and you end up with a random bad trait.  Do well and you end up with a random good trait.  Do great and you end up with... a random trait, good or bad...  If nothing else, we should at least get to random until something "good" comes up (just make a list of what qualifies as "good") or give us one or two chances to reroll.  I do LIKE random, but it doesn't make sense that you should be punished for doing great instead of merely doing well.

-Portraits are just plain broken, as has already been observed.  You say that you "have to raise the child" and yet I see no penalty for having a child taken (which stops you from adopting, but doesn't stop you from breeding them).  At least, I'm still assuming the social worker works like that.  I've never actually seen it happen in TS3.  Otherwise, you specifically allow AwesomeMod, which allows you to move sims out without an adult, regardless of their age.  If you are going to put in a rule or penalty for the portrait scoring, make it clear and official.

-Not very clear on which Sims are eligible for points.  You make a distinction between "heirs" and "spares" but are you implying that there can only be one heir and thus children of spares are not eligible for scoring and might as well be cast aside?  I'm just not really sure on this.  Children of an heir are obviously all eligible to score.  Parents of heirs are obviously eligible to score (even if one of the parents is not an heir).  But I'm just not sure whether children of spares produce spares/eligibles, or whether parents of spares which are not a parent of the heir are eligible.

Can't tell you how much I agree with this.  I know that these are not real people we are judging, but it still seems sad to me that our society focuses so much on superficial details.  Some of these Sims may not be perfect but I honestly think people are getting a little bit out of hand with their criticisms.  I have found in general that the Sims we have in TS3 are pretty good looking.  Were people expecting every randomly generated CAS Sim to look like a super model or something?

And I think it is much more likely than some people here realize for two beautiful parents to have an "average" or even below average looking child, and vice versa.

Yeah potty training is really done completely differently.  In Sims 2 it was best to wait until Bladder was really low before you try to potty, but that's definitely not the case here.  As long as their bladder isn't almost full, they will sit on the potty for quite a while before they go, and their training meter increases the whole time.

After doing it for a while, you will either get a success or a failure.  I believe it's related to your logic skill, and I've never had a success so I can't tell you what you get, but I have failed twice and it it just a minor performance hit.  It might also hit you coworker relationships, not sure.


Mood is a "performance metric."  See point A.


Does building skills not have any effect on stress level?  I never noticed a performance decrease, but I thought it added more stress.

I assume Office Hero modifies work socializing in the same fashion that Schmoozer does.
Also, how quickly does performance decay while you are missing work?  And what the heck is up with the Vacationer reward, I have no idea how that work.  I have no option to call in, and if I just tell my sim not to go, I still get a performance hit for being missing.  How does this thing work?

So stop back-talking people who give it to you.  The very first response told you exactly how to download and install Riverview without using the Download Manager and you were the one who got all nasty because that answer was not good enough for you.  If you have problems with your installation or your internet connection, make that clear and don't bitch at people for failing to take your special circumstances into account when you did not even make that much clear.

Of course, if you are not satisfied with the way you are being treated at MATY, feel free to take your business elsewhere.

I'm pretty sure you can put more than one rabbit hole on the same lot and have it fulfill all of the roles.  In Sunset valley, the grocery store, movie theater, and bookstore are all technically on the same lot, but it pops up 3 different icons on the map view.

Story mode won't take families out of the bin.

The bin is more like "copies" of families that you have created.  It's not neighborhood specific.  In TS2 the bin was essentially "homeless" Sims... but in TS3 is really just a repository of templates for YOU to use when you are adding families to the neighborhood.
When the games moves families into the neighborhood, they appear to be randomly generated, or if not they are built from some pre-existing templates that aren't in the bin.

I have to say I agree.  Part of the problem is that the Sims no longer actually SERVE the meal by setting out a plate for everyone in the house.  They have to serve themselves.  The fact that the sims actually EAT instead of blabbing to each other is an improvement, since (without pescado's mod) group meals took FOREVER in Sims 2.

However, they could have done something cool with this -- perhaps have an OPTION for family meals, where everyone will wait for the family to sit before they start eating.  To make it appealing, they could give you a moodlet, particularly for family-oriented sims.  This actually makes sense.

They really need an "Ask Age" social along the lines of "Ask About Career" and "Ask if Single"  because frankly I don't care who you are dating or what you do for a living if you are getting ready to kick the bucket.

Read my whole post.  Obviously, nobody cares if the mod breaks the launcher, but if the launcher breakage is related to the game breakage, then knowing why it breaks the launcher may help figure out why it breaks the game.

You may be interested to know that the mod is ALSO causing crashing issues when you try to install Sims2Pack files with the launcher.  It seems wild that the launcher would actually load the mods when you try to install something, but it does.  This is obviously not something that has to be fixed since it's very simple to remove the mod temporarily to install using the launcher, but if the crash is related, then exploring this may give more information as to why it's happening.

Every single one of the needs bars has an associated moodlet when it gets too low.  "Filling the bars" is not at all pointless, as it will take them longer to drop into negative moodlet status.  It's completely intentional that your needs have no direct effect on your mood whatsoever, because they spawn moodlets that do.

The moodlets system is more interesting because you are rewarded for doing other things.  Instead of just eating, peeing, showering, and sleeping before work, you can now be rewarded for doing things like gussying up, brushing your teeth, or fulfilling a wish.  Then there are "memories" like weddings/babies/deaths that give longer lasting moodlets too.  It was kind of stupid that your best friend could die in TS2 and it would have no effect whatsoever on your sims mood (MAYBE on their aspiration, and only if they happened to have the fear.  not likely).  The aspiration system in TS2 was pretty flawed.  Moodlets are a vast improvement.

They could have done a lot better with the romantic animations.  Compare TS2's couch makeout to TS3's.  It doesn't even look like they are ENJOYING it in TS3.  And I really miss the marriage proposal animation where the proposee would get all excited and JUMP into the other one's arms.  In TS3 its like they are reluctant to touch each other...

I don't think making the mood bars invisible would make it that much more difficult.  If you think it's too easy to get all of the rewards, shorten the lifespan.

New version crashes frequently for me.  No version before today did.  I am using the config package and I've tried mixing and matching all of the crap you've suggested.  Nothing seems to help.

Not sure if any of this is relevant, but I'm playing the digital download version from EADM, using nointro.package, a ton of patterns, and skin replacements.  Windoze Vista.  Tried everything that's been suggested and more.

I had two crashes that were blue screens and rebooted my entire computer, but I don't think they are related to the hack.  These seem to be some issue with my Riverview, probably some corrupted data somewhere.

Oh yes, mood definitely matters.  Try throwing a party at a scenic places.  If you throw a party on a nice community lot, you get a moodlet for the lot AND a moodlet for the party.

Of course, sims get very nice moodlets for first love and first kiss, so if you can manage to be your partner's first, you have a better shot at getting them to commit.  =)

I think your biggest error was posting a completely off-topic question in this thread.  Way to derail the entire discussion.

Anyway, as per the original topic, this might be kind of obvious, but make sure that the sim you are romanticizing is not already in a relationship with someone.  Even if you have made out and woohooed with them, they won't commit to you if they are already with someone else.  It can also be an issue with traits.  Sims with Commitment Issues will happily do all of the romantic actions EXCEPT going steady and becoming engaged/married.