How to make hobby leaders age?

[Haley]

This was in my previous install of FT, and I was going to ask around here, but my computer quite literally broke. Oh well. I am still going to ask in case it happens again.

My main male Sim in my previous install was quite attracted to the Music & Dance hobby "leader" (for lack of a better word), Noelle. I found her quite pretty, and thought it would be nice if she moved in/got married/had kids/the whole deal. I found I could not move her in by Propose > Move In in any situation. So, to get around this, I used boolprop testingcheatsenabled true to add the hobby leader to my family.

Everything was fine, or so I thought. She had skills, she had hobby enthusiasm, could get a job, etc etc etc. The only thing that WASN'T fine was that she would not age. I tried turning aging off/on, restarting the game, and nothing worked. I suppose the easy way out of this is to just "Set to Birthday" whenever I want her to "grow up", correct? I would rather have her just age normally, though.

Is this EAxis telling me to not remove hobby leaders from the pool or what? My computer died before I could see if a new hobby leader was generated in her place. Hrmph.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

[gynarchy]

According to the Prima guide, the only non-cheaty way to make a hobby leader playable is by marrying them on a community lot first. That very well may be incorrect information (shocking, I know!) but you could try to propose marriage when your Sim is visiting her hobby lot. If she is removed from the NPC pool a new one should be created to take her place.

[Kyna]

I married a hobby leader in - the same one as you.  Actually, she was joined not married.  They got engaged while my sim was at Uni, and joined when my sim returned to the main hood.  It wasn't a fancy wedding though, just a simple "propose/joining".  Had no problems at all.

I didn't play the neighbourhood long enough to see if she'd age to elder, it was in a test neighbourhood I was playing for a couple of weeks.  I did notice that her days to elderhood were decreasing as expected.

@gynarchy, there's no need to for a new one to be created to take her place (unless you've married in or killed off the two backup leaders for that hobby).  Without clean templates, there are already 30 hobby leaders, 3 for each hobby.

[Liz]

Without clean templates, there are already 30 hobby leaders, 3 for each hobby.

Srsly?! Way to bloat there, EAxis. And after they claimed to grok that we don't want a bunch of unnecessary/redundant character files with the whole 'tour guide' escapade. I can see maybe doing 2 for each if you want to have one male & one female, but why on earth would they dump 20 "just in case" characters into the neighbourhood when their game is perfectly capable of whupping one up on the spot if needed?

[Kyna]

EAxis have always created NPCs in sets of 3 for some reason.

Not the same as the tour guide issue, where they were being continually being spawned and weren't limited to the EAxis standard of 3.  EAxis clearly don't have a problem with 3 of each NPC, and as far as they were concerned the only problem with the tour guide glitch was that it meant there were more than 3 tour guides.

[Liz]

Oh, of course, I understand that it's not the same thing (set of 30 dump vs. continuous addition), but it seemed they finally understood that adding a bunch of unnecessary character files to a neighbourhood wasn't a good idea. Turning around, then, and inflicting 20 completely redundant character files on each neighbourhood, then, just smacks to me of a lazy "this is the way we've always done it" attitude that suggests a lack of any real, critical thought going into putting together a new EP.

I can see why they made 3 maids originally. Lots of families hire one. There's a lot of interaction potential there, and having more than one could help flesh out a 'hood with some variety. Especially since we're still core game at this point. But 3 firefighters? It's damned near impossible to hit the "post-fire, pre-exit" window and actually interact with them. Who cares if it's the same face that just squirts and leaves? Three mindless coffee jockeys? Three mute chefs, when it's a work of sadorandom luck to ever find one in a situation where you can actually "meet" them? And now three dance hobby instructors, when they can't even get one of them to administer a contest without turning the lot into phail.

Clean/empty templates FTW.

[KLGFCG]

Does anyone know if the hobby leaders actually rotate if you have multiples? I used a clean template and made my own hobby leaders (one of each type). If they actually rotate, I may go through and make another set so there's a male and female hobby leader for each hobby, but if the extras are just in reserve if you manage to get rid of the primary, I won't bother.

[Alex]

I have noticed that very occasionally a sim will have a different hobby maven contacting them than for some reason. I don't know why though, and it doesn't happen very often.

Plus, I can understand having maybe one male and one female maven for each neighborhood, but the extra 10 really is pointless! In fact, there are many NPCs that I don't understand why they make in threes: Social Worker, Repo Man, Tour Guide, Unsavoury Charlatan, Ninja ect.

[doren]

Three mindless coffee jockeys? Three mute chefs, when it's a work of sadorandom luck to ever find one in a situation where you can actually "meet" them?

Oh, they give you plenty of chances to meet them, it's called "Do you mind if I bring a friend along?". And with Freetime the visitors on the hobby lots were almost exclusively NPC's, actually always the same numbers, 2 students, 1 professor, 2 townies/downtownies and 2 service sims/NPC-NPCs (kitchen workers, maitre d' etc.). 

[Faizah]

I married in a dancer as you would any townie. Her husband was a CAS adult, and I did the whole thing on his home lot. She's an elder now, everything ran as smoothly as it ever does.

[cwykes]

............. I found I could not move her in by Propose > Move In in any situation. So, to get around this, I used boolprop testingcheatsenabled true to add the hobby leader to my family.

Everything was fine, or so I thought. She had skills, she had hobby enthusiasm, could get a job, etc etc etc. The only thing that WASN'T fine was that she would not age.........

Doesn't help you move forward, but sims not aging is one of the hazards of using the tombstone of L&D to move them in.  It's OK if you use "move in neighbour" and scroll through every sim in the hood to find the one you want, but the other option, where you pick from a shortlist of sims currently on the lot, always resulted in Sims not aging for me.  Use the teleporter shrub from Taster's choice instead.

You can use the shrub, make her a townie and try again?
Did you figure out why you didn't get "propose move in" at all?  Was the house full of pregnant sims/pets or something?

[Haley]

@gynarchy: The entire "Propose" option was not available to my playable Sim when encountering the hobby leader on the hobby lot. So...yeah.

@cwykes: Ahhhh that would explain the not aging thing, then. I had no idea the tombstone would do that. I did not have a teleporter of any kind downloaded in my game; perhaps that was what I was missing? About the "Propose" option, no, my house only had 2 other Sims in it, so frankly I have no idea why the option was not available.

Thanks, all. I will try the teleporter bush (if needed) on a clean install of the game when my new computer arrives. Hopefully it will work.

[leaths]

I might just be talking out of my ass here, but isn't "Propose...Move In" only available on the sim's home lot anyway? You'd have to invite the hobby leader over and then ask. Still, that wouldn't explain why you didn't have any propose options, unless their relationship wasn't high enough for engagement.