Bad Kids? Bad People?

[Savage]

People talk about having really bad kids that bully other kids, but even if my kids arent nice at all and have all outgoing and grow up badly they seem to be wonderfully nice, so how can I get them to be horrible?

Also I heard that the lie-device/dectector thing (aspiration reward) encourages kids to be bad? Is this true?

Also what the hell does encouraging a kid do I havent seen any effects?

[BlueSoup]

Umm...ok?

Anyway, the aspiration grow-up thing seems to affect elder life.  And then I'm not sure if the ages below adult even matter for that, or if it's only Adult --> Elder.

As for the lie detector machine, it build creativity.

[Renatus]

Er, huh? I would be helpful if you put seperate topics on seperate paragraphs, because I'm not sure if that entire thing is all related...

Anyhow, sometimes the sim kids are nasty if they have low nice points, what with pranking and such. Some people let their sims run on a lot of autonomy, and even adult sims aren't that great about getting along with others! However, quite a lot of the percieved personalities of the sims is role-playing - it's the player's own imagination putting the fullness of the personality there.

The lie detector doesn't actually do anything but build creativity, the description is just flavour text (text added to make it more interesting). It's more of that role-playing business.

[Bangelnuts]

Er, huh? I would be helpful if you put seperate topics on seperate paragraphs, because I'm not sure if that entire thing is all related...

Anyhow, sometimes the sim kids are nasty if they have low nice points, what with pranking and such. Some people let their sims run on a lot of autonomy, and even adult sims aren't that great about getting along with others! However, quite a lot of the percieved personalities of the sims is role-playing - it's the player's own imagination putting the fullness of the personality there.

The lie detector doesn't actually do anything but build creativity, the description is just flavour text (text added to make it more interesting). It's more of that role-playing business.

Hmm My Simmies all have personality ! just because I want them to so there! but seriously  sims have a base "personality" soley based on the points in each of the categores ,nice,neat active, outgoing,lazy, shy, grouchy or sloppy.
  Half the fun of playing the sims is that how much or how little story your sims have to  tell is based on the players imagination . the career and aspiration rewards ALL HAVE A "COLORFUL" description attached as does much of the maxian furniture but under neath  the imaginative description the real purpose of the object is always listed. the lie deetor machine's purpose? to build creativity , the teleprompter builds charisma and so on
   and  to answer your final question yes encouraging sim kids if done often enough can tweak their basic birth personality and in some cases build new interests

[Sagana]

Anyway, the aspiration grow-up thing seems to affect elder life.  And then I'm not sure if the ages below adult even matter for that, or if it's only Adult --> Elder.

I recently read a rather convincing argument (using clones) that children growing up badly turn out less attractive - sunken faces, more prominant features and the like. </offtopic>

Ontopic:

As for bad kids, what kind of bad do you want? The closest sims get is pranks, pushing and shoving and arguing and stealing newspapers and dumping over trashcans... grouchy messy kids will do stuff like that if you direct them to or let them in the right circumstances.

Encouraging (enough of it) changes their points in those areas. If you have an ingame born sim with 10 neat and you'd rather not have a neatnik (altho it's quite handy really), you can encourage sloppiness and eventually bring them down. Takes awhile tho.

[MissDoh]

I wonder if likes adult, kids would be more "pranky" or grouchy if their fun is low (for teens and adults it is like that when their aspiration meter is low).

As for encouraging (is useful to change personality traits of a Sim), to have it at best, make sure parent and the child are bestfriends and that they are both in a good mood.
Depending on the difference of level between the child and parent (let's say child have 2 in neat and parent 5) with this type of difference it takes at least 7 or 8 times to have an improvement (a bar in the personality trait apear). Always make sure, that they're is an  head icon with a + over the child's head and that the action is completely finish before you start it again.
Let's say now an elder do the same thing, best friend with the child, same difference in level of cleaness, it will take the elder 5 or 6 times and if the difference is bigger (2 for child, 9 for elder) it takes even less (this apply to the adult/parent too). Mainly because of the age difference, the elder is more experience so he has more influence on a child or teen.

Maxis did not want it to be that easy to gain a personality level up or down, I would say it take approximately the same time as if you would study logic or any other skill for the child to get a new personnality trait.  This is one of the reason why Elders are useful in the game.

You can also modify any Sims interest by choosing in the "talk" option "talk about interest".  Let's say you want to match 2 Sims together making them talk about their interest together will raise common interest between those 2 making it easier for them to become friends/lovers.  You can also use magazine to achieve the same thing as long as you know what are both Sims interests.

[Ellatrue]

and I thought talking about interests was just a good way to get the sims to hate each other- mine always react negatively

I also thought encouraging worked differently- in my experience, when a child is encouraged by a parent, they need to be encouraged three times before they gain another personality point (provided they like the parent enough to listen). I have not really noticed a difference with the elders in my game, but I have heard from many people that it's there.

[Muisie]

I recently read a rather convincing argument (using clones) that children growing up badly turn out less attractive - sunken faces, more prominant features and the like. </offtopic>

Now THAT is interesting!  I often wonder why I'm growing toddlers/kids/teens up in platinum.  Other than the nice message about how they grew up great.  This would be a good incentive.  I sure don't like ugly.

[Yay]

I recently read a rather convincing argument (using clones) that children growing up badly turn out less attractive - sunken faces, more prominant features and the like. </offtopic>

I would really love to have the link to this, if you don't mind. I have lot of trailer trash (no offense to trailer dwellers  ) that are just waiting to have something worse happen to them.

[Renatus]

Anyway, the aspiration grow-up thing seems to affect elder life.  And then I'm not sure if the ages below adult even matter for that, or if it's only Adult --> Elder.

I recently read a rather convincing argument (using clones) that children growing up badly turn out less attractive - sunken faces, more prominant features and the like. </offtopic>

I'd like a link too, if you've got one! It'd be really cool if growing up badly did something other than give them a red memory and make their elder stage shorter (which is almost a GOOD thing sometimes with this game).

[Sagana]

It would be a whole lot easier to give you a link if I could remember where I read the blamed thing I know I must have got there from one of the stories I've been reading lately so either from here, from SimPosieum (I dunno if Trubble reads this, but just in case, you write *the best* sims stories - I'm loving reading them and appreciate the link to SimPosieum from RL for that top of the list) or from the Yahoo Classic Legacy group - one of the links to one of the blogs there. Unfortunately I also hit "next blog" in there a few times here and there, so it could be from inside somewhere... and my history has all this stuff about the leper king (got off on a kick) mixed into it, so I can't just history back and find it)

I can see the article...two females in one family, victims of the stuck random roll thing so exactly the same sim, one raised well and the other poorly with this skinny face, and an older male that shared their genetics and two other females... but I just can't find it. Isn't that annoying? <keeps looking> I'll post it when/if it turns up.

[baratron]

I already have one family that's 6 clones of the same sim, but they're all adults. Temptation to make more? Argh! Don't tempt me!

(I might, though. I wonder whether it makes a difference if you start with Maxis archetypal faces or highly customised ones?)

[Renatus]

Sagana, if you can't find it I'll probably do some experimenting on my own, as I have a good five days to make use of slacking off on things I should be doing before I HAVE to do anything. 

[Sagana]

hey, I found it :) here:

http://home.cogeco.ca/~williamsjl3/index.html

scroll down to the Dec. 11th entry.

I hope other people who would like still do some experiments - I don't think that's definitive, just interesting and persuasive.

[J. M. Pescado]

This information is entirely bogus. Growing up well or badly has ZERO effect on your sim other than elder lifespan. It will not make them learn slower. It will not make them behave badly. Lilith is a bitch not because she grew up badly, but because her interests are highly polarized and she has fewer nice points, which causes her to favor more mean interactions and have poor conversations with people that don't share her highly polarized interests out of the box.

[Sagana]

Ok, I buy entirely that it doesn't change their personality or interests a whit, but will it make their faces thinner/sunken? That, imo, is a rather more interesting question, and the primary discussion in that blog which iirc (and I probably don't) makes only one parenthetical statement regarding the points you're raising.

[Bangelnuts]

Ok, I buy entirely that it doesn't change their personality or interests a whit, but will it make their faces thinner/sunken? That, imo, is a rather more interesting question, and the primary discussion in that blog which iirc (and I probably don't) makes only one parenthetical statement regarding the points you're raising.

I find it hard to believe that growing up badly or well would have any thing to do with the hideous apperarance of those sims! I have a variety of sims in my game and all of them range from Average to Pixelated hunks !and occasionally I will get an in game born sim that was born to awesome looking sims that has a little different appearance than I expected based on what the parents look like.
  Case in Point Sim brynne is very Pretty and her sim Hubby is a Pixelated Hunk they have a newborn daughter that looks a bit strange  considering her parents genetics.
    I then remebered  that This baby is the granddaughter of Bella Goth. and while Bella herself is a very pretty sim I havent a clue what Bella's parents look like. the genetics could well be a throw down from Bella's Parents to this newborn.
     I think sim appearance  whether its hideous or awesome is based soley on genetics rather than how a sim does or doesnt fare at Transition.

[Ellatrue]

I suspect it affects how many nightmares they have. Most of my sims never have any nightmares, or moments where they start crying for no reason, except for the one sim that grew up badly in strangeville- the red haired alien of the "single" family.

[Sagana]

sim clones would have the same genetics. they're actually the same sim born at different times.

it's possible they weren't clones, just had a strong family resemblance and exactly the same stats <shrug> it wouldn't be that hard to check if someone has a clean neighborhood. have a sim, make a backup, grow sim up well 3 times, restore the backup, grow the same sim up badly 3 times. if he/she looks the same no matter, it doesn't have an affect.

[ari_]

that's an interesting theory, especially since I noticed something last week in my game, and I've been meaning to post about it:

I restored my earliest backup (from Oct '04) because I'm retaking early snapshots - I only got a decent graphic card in Nov'04. So I'm using InSim and other cheats to simply set up the shots I want, and that includes de-aging adults to children and/or toddlers. I noticed that a sim that I de-aged from adult to toddler (and then re-grew into a child) was suddenly a better-looking toddler than before.

Here's comparison pictures (the only difference is that the new one is also using a default replacement skintone, and different hair/eyebrows) - note the distance between her nose and her mouth:





Granted, they're not the best pictures, but I think there *is* a definite difference.

[Sandilou]

Is that a mono-brow?  Wow!

[IgnorantBliss]

The problem is that how would the game know which faces and features are more attractive than others? If someone starts off with a very weak jaw, for example, making it more promiment would probably make them more attractive, not less attractive, unlike someone who started with a strong jaw in the first place. The attractiveness of the sim faces is about the combination of all the separate features, how they happen to match.

In the Mandy and Mindy example, they were probably different genetically to start with, but it's just that toddlers' and children's features are softer and less defined in general, and it's often hard to see the differences until they grow up. And since they clearly had different noses, anyway, I wouldn't call them genetic clones.

[Sandilou]

Besides, you can age sims in CAS when you're creating them: you get the option to see them at each lifestage bar baby. That would indicate that the aging genetics is already laid out, irrespective of behaviour or personality.

[Savage]

Besides, you can age sims in CAS when you're creating them: you get the option to see them at each lifestage bar baby. That would indicate that the aging genetics is already laid out, irrespective of behaviour or personality.

Thats what I was thinking. I tihnk that was just a one off, but damn I don't get how the sims 2 creates such ugly babies all the time 

(PS Love you avatar haha!)

[IgnorantBliss]

I also seem to remember that all the future faces for the child are created at the moment it's born. Also, male versions of the faces are generated for a female child, and vice versa, even though we can't see them, I think for future purposes, to be passed on to their their children of both genders.