About individualism in sims, obsessive/stupid behaviour, mods and feeling lonely

[Ancient Sim]

Being one who rambles, I read the entire post and I agree with you insofar as I find OFB rather boring.  It's too much messing about and I don't like things that take the Sims away from their houses, because it just makes progressing the lots take even longer.  I would like to see a stop now to extra neighbourhoods and an increase in interactions, life-periods, etc.  I think we have enough 'extra places' to be going on with.  I'd be quite happy to stick to home businesses if it wasn't for the fact that greeted guests won't stay if the business is closed and those who are teleported in just spend their entire time complaining that the business isn't open.  I'm still waiting for a mod to sort that problem out, because it totally ruins the whole home-business scenario.  What are they supposed to do, get rid of the business everytime they close it and then start another one? 

I love the game, but it has never realised its full potential as far as I am concerned.  Maybe I expect too much, but I do think they could have made far more of the personality angle.  It's LUDICROUS that a Knowledge Sim would get all orgasmic over a swingset in the same way as a Pleasure Sim does, but that's what happens, and that sort of thing really annoys me because as far as I can see, it wouldn't be difficult to do something about it.  Surely a swingset could be adapted so it had higher appeal to some Sims than others?  I would have thought so, but clearly Maxis can't be bothered to think that way and I get irritated by that sort of attitude.  It spoils what could be such a great game.

I am taking a mini-break right now.  I only played for an hour or so on Wednesday and yesterday I didn't play at all.  I find it helps sometimes.  I know I need one when I load the neighbourhood screen and find myself sitting there thinking "Now what?", before having to force myself to play eeny-meeny-miny-mo and click on any old lot.  I think it's because all my lots are in synch now and I have to go to Uni to play for at least two semesters, which is not exactly exciting.  The novelty of dormies dropping dead on the outside perimeters has long since worn-off.

I think the next expansion pack, whatever it is, will make or break the game.  If it isn't something truly special, I can see them not bothering with anymore (just a feeling).  Personally, I would rather they didn't and moved straight onto TS3, because a lot of the time with TS2 I am just sitting there thinking "If only" and I don't think what I want will come until TS3.  If they can't find a way to give the Sims more varied personalities, it'll just be a case of "Hurry up and get this one finished with so we can get onto TS3" as far as I'm concerned. 

I still love the game, but the novelty of TS2 has worn-off, at least for now. 

[witch]

I'd be quite happy to stick to home businesses if it wasn't for the fact that greeted guests won't stay if the business is closed and those who are teleported in just spend their entire time complaining that the business isn't open.

Ah ha! That's why those sims kept moaning!
*lightbulb appears over witch's head*

[ZiggyDoodle]

'd be quite happy to stick to home businesses if it wasn't for the fact that greeted guests won't stay if the business is closed and those who are teleported in just spend their entire time complaining that the business isn't open.  I

My first business was a bakery at the home of the Pitts.  Now, these folks are second generation, both employed, and have four kids in Uni.   The business is open on days they aren't working, and maybe for a few hours after they get home, depending on my mood.

They inherited lots of $$$ and have a hot tub. pool table, swings,  bowling alley, and other goodies on the lot (outside the house).  When the business opened, the entire town turned out - not to buy goodies, but to use the amenities.  So I plopped an Electrono ticket machine at the bakery entrance and started charging fifty bucks an hour. 

In the few days the business has been open, it has taken in about $129,000 and the Sims in the hot tub tend to spend all night there in spite of the bakery being closed.  Am thinking of adding a couple more hot tubs since the bucks keep coming in all night long so long as there are dopy Sims in the tub. 

Maybe it's a game glitch; don't know and don't care. 

[Nadira]

To Ancient Sim:
I agree with you and I wish I could have phrased it the way you did.

I very much like your formulation:

I love the game, but it has never realised its full potential as far as I am concerned.

You have put into one sentence what took me half a page of rambling.
Thanks!

[Ancient Sim]

I think maybe I expect too much from the game, I don't know.  I can remember years back playing The Hobbit on the old Spectrum and wishing the characters would be more spontaneous, more unpredictable, not do the same old things all the time.  Although the Sims are much more advanced than the characters in that game were, there is still too much repetition and not enough surprise.  I think it may be a few years yet before we see the kind of advancement I am hoping for.  I'd also like to see the actual Sims looking more realistic - there are plenty of games where the characters look like real people, so I see no reason why the Sims can't. 

Nevertheless, to repeat what I said before, it's still a great game ... but it has a way to go yet.  Hopefully, it's getting there.

[skandelouslala]

But what´s the sense of a game which in itself - without all those helpful mods - is not interesting to play except for someone who has the intelligence and imagination of a cucumber (sorry if I hurt someone, but that´s how I am feeling at the moment)?

^^^
Even with the mods it can be uninteresting and unimaginative IF that is the way you play.  If you just sit there and watch your little sims go about their lives w/o much direction from you and expect something cool to happen...for them to find their own way in their little sim world, it's just not going happen.  Sometimes the game has surprised me with a bit of randomness that it throws in, but let's face it, it is not often that that happens.  If you have to create your own scenerios and give your sims a personality and a story.  If you ask me, that takes a lot of imagination for the players (I'm not sure where intelligence fits in with that at the moment, I'll get back to yah lol) Just read some of the better sims stories from the sim storytellers out there and you can see how much imagination people are throwing into their games.  Otherwise, it's basically nothing unless you breathe life into your characters.

It's a personal thing and how myself and I know some others play.  I know people that play completely differently and that's fine.  I take breaks from my sims sometimes...sometimes only a few days and sometimes a few weeks.  Sometimes I want to build things instead play with my sims...sometimes I'm engrossed in a storyline I have going on.

Like Ancient Sim said and I agree....I never saw TS2 as reaching it's full potential up to this point.  I'd rather have what I have though, than still be playing TS1 or something lol

[Torkle]

I agree with many of the points Nadira raises about what we hoped was in Sims2 (and expansions) versus what was actually delivered by Maxis, even with hacks.  Unfortunately, simulating intelligence and personality, even in a limited way, is an extremely difficult programming challenge.  Hell, on some days its difficult for me to simulate intelligence and personality in real life.  To expect such advanced programming from a mass-marketed game is unrealistic.  And Maxis programming sometimes doesn't even achieve basic programming skills.

There are days that make me question why I am still playing this game; my playing sessions become just another repetitive cycle and it stops being fun.

And then I discover some little thing that I hadn't noticed before.  The latest was the Flirt/Tune-Up interaction that you can get when seducing a servo robot.  The one before that was the little animation sequence that a sim does when watching fish in the aquarium.

And it gives me renewed hope in the game, the fun returns, and I play a little longer.

[Ancient Sim]

I went to play last night and I realised that I'd forgotten to mention the one thing I want them to do that they don't do and that's LEARN BY THEIR MISTAKES.  I had an amazing situation going on in the house I was playing, which at the time I entered it was inhabited by Trepie & his precious Lilith, together with their twin baby daughters, plus Angela & her husband - Angela being a few hours off giving birth to twins herself (both natural, no hacks). 

Four adults in the house, but not one of them any use.  Angela was asleep standing up at the bottom of the stairs, Angela's husband was at work, Trepie was asleep and Lilith was being forced up and down the stairs by the Baby Controller when she was on the verge of starving.  The Baby Controller then woke Trepie up and the two of them got stuck on the landing between the cots, with babies on the floor in front of the cots blocking their way.  Tagan came home from work and was sent straight upstairs by the Baby Controller and he also got stuck ... it went on and on.  Angela eventually woke-up on the verge of starvation and immediately went dolally and needed the shrink, due to the fact that I'd had to respawn Daniel's grave as it had disappeared and she thought he'd died again.  One that was over she gave birth, at which point all hell was let loose.  I managed to squash two more cots in, but everybody was trying to put a baby into the same one.  I called a Nanny, who immediately got stuck between two babies.  It was both a total nightmare and totally hilarious .  When the first of the older twins turned into a toddler, it became impossible to cope.

There were three fires while all this was going on and the fireman couldn't get to any of them because Lilith's army truck was in the way.  I couldn't move it or I'd not have been able to put it back due to the street-parking not working anymore.  Poor Tagan spent 2 or 3 hours trying to put out the fire Angela started and was almost starving himself by the time he'd finished.  In the end he gave up and Trepie had to finish it.  Trepie is, of course, an expert at putting out fires, having already put out Angela's bum on his business lot.  For some reason I wasn't able to have more than one of them put it out at the same time, even though three items were on fire (the cooker, the microwave and the trash compactor) in the first fire, which was the worst.  Angela will keep trying to cook Lobster Thermidor and she never manages to do it properly.

In the end I got Tagan to move him and his family out and eventually Lilith & Trepie managed to get things back to normal with the help of the Nanny, who I re-scheduled as soon as she'd left.  I did as much as I could to avoid cheating while all this was going on, although in the end I had to push the toddler's hunger bar up because I was getting warnings about her being skin & bone.  Nobody could feed her because they couldn't get to her due to being blocked by babies and the stupid Nanny.  To make matters worse, whenever any of them had tried to eat, they'd set fire to whatever they cooked. 

Trepie has died twice I think, through starving to death due to not being able to leave Lilith's side, and I think Lilith has died once now as well.  Quite a few of my Sims have died for love, some more than once, and I have a couple who will die as soon as I enter their lots, including Syberspunk's precious boyfriend Kelvin, who can't even do a wee-wee unless he uses the same bush Ste is using.  Yes, I know I could direct them to eat, but I prefer to see just how far they will go.  What annoys me is that they have no idea why they starved and don't learn by it.  I may be wrong, but I'm sure something could be programmed in so they 'remember' what caused their death and don't repeat the situation - if they could learn like this, the game would be a thousand times better in my opinion.

In the meantime, I won't micro-manage my Sims because (a) I'm not interested in storytelling and (b) I'd miss out on this sort of carry-on and it wouldn't be anywhere near as funny.  I'd never have had the hilarious adventure with Angela's bum being set on fire if I'd been micromanaging, not to mention quite a few others.  I just wish they could somehow understand what they are doing, in a pixel sort of way, but maybe that will never be possible, I don't know.  As I said before, I think sometimes I expect too much.