HACK REQUEST: more want variety for teens and uni students

[HelloKit]

This is something that bugs the crap out of me. Ever since I installed Uni, every teen rolls wants for scholarships and to go to college, and every Uni student constantly rolls wants for academic activities: doing assignments, group research, going to class and writing term papers.

Reality check #1: Not all teens want to go to college. I never had that desire, and neither did a lot of my friends. Now it makes sense for Knowledge and maybe Fortune teens to want to go. Maybe even some Romance teens, if they want to have that part of the college experience, and maybe even Popularity teens. But I would think that Family teens would be more interested in going right into starting a family of their own. And Pleasure Sims would rather just sit around having fun, right? (Or maybe some would want to go to college for the party scene.)

Reality check #2: As touched on above, not all college students are there for the book learnin'. Some may have been forced to go by their parents, but have no interest in attending classes and getting good grades. And some are there more for the parties and/or "WooHoo". I was just complaining to my boyfriend about how all my students have 4.0 GPAs or close to it, without much effort or suffering, and I realized that it's because they all want to do well... but in the real world that's not the case. Believe it or not I'd like for some members of my Sim-world to be screw-ups and failures, but to be happy about it... not simply because I choose to deny them their wants of doing academic activities.

So, would it be possible to make a mod where instead of all teens and students rolling the same wants, these college-related wants only come up where it makes sense based on aspiration, personality, and interests? I realize it's probably a big job, if even possible. It would be even cooler if certain Sims feared some of these things, but assume that wouldn't be possible since the fears would have to exist in the first place. But if someone could at least get rid of the wants for Sims where it doesn't make sense, it would be really awesome.

[Oddysey]

I remember Pescado saying something about how the "go to college" want has no check tree, and its impossible to install a check tree on a want that doesn't already have one. This was pre-Nightlife, so I don't know if that's changed. It is massively annoying, because it basically means that teen sims only have 3 want slots for most of that age duration, and if the other slots get clogged with crappy wants (as they are wont to do, in teens especially) it forces them to actually sleep to reset those wants.

Oh, and the reason your sims have "4.0 GPAs or close to it, without much effort or suffering" is because Uni is ridiculously easy. Especially with macrotastics.

[Sagana]

and if the other slots get clogged with crappy wants (as they are wont to do, in teens especially) it forces them to actually sleep to reset those wants

send 'em downtown. that spins the wants. If just going doesn't work, send them on a timed thing, but I think just showing up downtown will spin them so they get "play pool" if they're at a pool place or whatever. They spin again when they get home and not necessarily back to what they had before (I've seen the "go to college" get spun out to something else, also).

Tho I agree - I wish we could get rid of some of this stuff. I put in the "no influence" wants hack and that's helping (even my adults kept rolling those) but my finance sim has gotten ridiculously easy to platinum as she keeps rolling "get a scholarship" wants for her 4 teenage boys, and they can call for a new scholarship almost every day. It fulfills and just rolls up again.

[Ashleigh]

I was seriously thinking about this myself earlier today - great minds and all that. If it can't be done, it can't be done, and that's that - but it definitely pisses me off when I have a man-hungry Family Sim with babies on her mind and 0 interest in school desperate to go to college and wanting everyone else to tag their freeloader asses along, too. If anything can EVER be done about this, sign me up.

[J. M. Pescado]

I was seriously thinking about this myself earlier today - great minds and all that. If it can't be done, it can't be done, and that's that - but it definitely pisses me off when I have a man-hungry Family Sim with babies on her mind and 0 interest in school desperate to go to college and wanting everyone else to tag their freeloader asses along, too. If anything can EVER be done about this, sign me up.

The "wanting everyone else to tag their freelader asses along" effect is clamped down a bit by some of the anti-obsession hacks, but the actual Go To College want itself defies any attempt to cap it. Thus the "limping along on 3 want slots" effect persists. College is effectively the new teen, since the teen stage is now so badly crippled that you just end it quickly. Which is just as well, since it's extremel overlong otherwise.

As for the 4.0 GPA effect, this is because, let's face it, Uni was not the most well-thought-out expansion pack. There are essentially two possibilities: Make 4.0s easy, or make it hard. If it is easy, well, you get the present state of affairs in which it requires basically no effort to do. If it is hard, your sims will spend the entire 3 days of a semester studying. While perhaps more realistic, THIS IS NOT AT ALL INTERESTING TO PLAY. At one point I considered attempting to make the experience more difficult, but realized that this really would not add to the gameplay at all: Watching your sims study for 3 days was, on reflection, not really any more interesting, nor would it really stop them from getting that 4.0, unless the difficulty were cranked up well into the "impossible" range.

[BeckerCheez]

All my Family Sims who have gone through college struggled.  Yet all of the kids I've sent through college (with the exception of a few Popularity Sims...darn you Pepe and Wakka!) have made 3.5's and up.  Boring, yes.  Managing 10 kids at a time, very challenging.   

[J. M. Pescado]

All my Family Sims who have gone through college struggled.  Yet all of the kids I've sent through college (with the exception of a few Popularity Sims...darn you Pepe and Wakka!) have made 3.5's and up.

I'm sure you just suck at it. Family sims are no worse than any other sims in college. Even if they do spend their time losing ASP because there's absolutely nothing family-related they can do.

Boring, yes.  Managing 10 kids at a time, very challenging.   

In the sense of "putting your neighborhood back together from the smoking wreckage after it explodes sometime after the third generation", maybe. Run the numbers: 10 kids -> 100 grandkids -> 1000 great grandchildren -> 10000 great-great-grandchildren = BFBVFS. 10 kids is not a behavior that your neighborhood can survive. To actually play out a family sim to that extent is a policy that will eventually render your neighborhood unplayable. Zero population growth pretty much has to be the key.

[syberspunk]

In the sense of "putting your neighborhood back together from the smoking wreckage after it explodes sometime after the third generation", maybe. Run the numbers: 10 kids -> 100 grandkids -> 1000 great grandchildren -> 10000 great-great-grandchildren = BFBVFS. 10 kids is not a behavior that your neighborhood can survive. To actually play out a family sim to that extent is a policy that will eventually render your neighborhood unplayable. Zero population growth pretty much has to be the key.

Assuming you make each of those 10 kids have another set of 10 kids. You could choose not to breed all of those sims, and/or only breed those that actually roll up wants to have babies.

And I find that, if you play the game with the idea of strictly fulfilling wants, many non-Knowledge sims don't always roll up college related wants. If you just go by that, they won't always get 4.0's. I was playing my own legacy challenge, and balancing between gradually building up skills, mostly when the sim actually rolled a want to, and doing college-related wants (going to class, doing assignments, etc.) along with all the sim's other wants, and the first semester he ended up with only a B+. Yeah... still a pretty good grade, and it would have been easy to get an A+ if I ignored all their wants and strictly focused on college rampaging. But you don't always have to end up with a perfect grade all the time. Heck, I've had some Romance and Popularity sims who have been more obsessed with having lovers and making best friends that they barely build up their GPAs. I think the Pleasure sims are also more obsessed with having fun than studying.

Ste

[ZephyrZodiac]

Funny, I've found Family Sims are the most likely to get Do Assignment, Write Term Paper, etc. wants (at least for the first couple of semesters) than other aspirations!  And if everyone else is at Uni, where else are they likely to meet the sim of their dreams?  (or if boyfriend/girlfriend is going, what better place to make sure they keep them!  Nearly all my romance sims with a teen steady, go to Uni thinking they can let rip, only to find their girl/boyfriend moving in the next day!  And since they both keep spinning related wants, is dead easy to keep them both platinum as long as you let the Family sim propose engagement when the fear is not present among the romance sim's fears!

[Ancient Sim]

I've had I think 3 Pleasure teens so far and none of them asked to go to Uni.  I sent them, but they didn't ask to go.  Putting them through is difficult because a lot of the time their wants are either unsatisfiable, or very short-lived.

My last two were a couple with 3 lightning bolts and it was incredibly hard work keeping them apart (I don't want more than one dorm, too boring).  Nevertheless, the male (one of my Sims) managed to get Magna Cum Laude and was 4.0 for the first semester until his girlfriend arrived.  She is a MATY Sim, Jen Warren, and she hasn't graduated yet (her final is due in 4 hours) but I don't think she'll get honours, she's around 3.5 I think.  It was much harder to get her to work, probably because I forgot to get anyone to teach her to study.  I am constantly having to send her to blow bubbles, jump on the sofa and rap in the corner of the room to keep her spirits up or she cries all over the place.  If I take her likul pink bunny rabbit away, she wanders around "missing this object" and looking so pitiful I could gladly strangle her!

One thing puzzles me, though.  Why don't Pleasure Sims pull a face when you ask them to study?  If they're supposed to hate anything that means WORK, why do they do their homework & assignments without protest?  I was expecting a similar reaction to the one messy Sims have when asked to clean something, but there's nothing any different at all. 

Oh, and I've found that once the Sims have a partner in Uni, their wants stop being college-related, or very few of them are; similarly, if they make a best friend out of a fellow student who graduates and leaves, their wants seem to change to ones concerning that student.  Out of about a dozen so far in my new Pleasantview, I think only two have asked to graduate, one of whom was Trepie.  I'm not sure if he was the greedy one who asked to graduate and to graduate with honours, but I know one of them did. 

[HelloKit]

Watching your sims study for 3 days was, on reflection, not really any more interesting, nor would it really stop them from getting that 4.0

But that's my point. Right now, all of my student Sims want to spend most of their time studying, and it is boring. I'd rather some of them want to spend their time doing other things, so that maybe they slack off on the studying and get a lower grade, or even flunk out once in a while. I don't want all perfect Sims, I want some variety in my neighborhood... I'm not looking for the grades to be more difficult to obtain, just for some of my Sims to be less interested in academics so they might not do as well as those dedicated Knowledge Sims.

Maybe it would make more sense knowing the way I play. I prioritize needs over wants over work/school over miscellaneous skilling. When all their wants are school related, they're fulfilling two of those priority levels at the same time, so it takes less time for the grade meter to fill. If I have to spend more time fulfilling non-school related wants before sending them to hit the books, it will be harder for them to get those perfect grades.

I suppose one option is to focus on only non-school wants for the Sims who shouldn't like school so much, and find ways to reroll them when there's nothing but school wants left. Any possible way to add a "reroll all wants" option to the lot debugger?

[Oddysey]

The entire problem with the Uni concept is that, fundamentally, school really isn't all that interesting. Even college. In real life, school is pretty boring, and not a terribly great foundation for a game.

[vecki]

I currently have a couple of Pleasure sims (downtownie teens) messing about (coz they sure as hell aren't studying) at college, and I have to say it's the first time since installing the college clock that I haven't madly skipped through the college years.  They have NO WANTS relating to Uni at all, but they'll autonomously go to classes so that gets their grades up to about a 3.8 GPA.  The rest of the time they're on dates, playing on couches, playing/fighting with their dormie mates, dancing, juggling, and having a great old time.  They're pretty entertaining.  So far, anyway - I'm only up to the second year of college for them.

Occasionally if I notice they have the influence points I'll have them influence a dormie to do their term paper, if only to avoid the 'influence someone to cook' or 'clean' wants that seem to pop up as the influence meter fills up even though we have a cafeteria worker AND a maid!

Only thing I've noticed as I've left these guys in a dorm is that I don't recall the dorm bills being as expensive as they've become post NL!  The Pleasant girls + Dustin & Dirk were paying up to 700simoleons at a dorm in Academie (one reason why I moved them out as quickly as I could), but considerably less at a house, and my pleasure students are currently paying around 300 a semester in their dorm at Sim State.

[Dark Trepie]

I think its been said before.  But Uni is only truly usefull for Romance sims with the 20 different woohoo/love LTW's.  Because once they move back to the neighborhood they'll most likely never see a dormie again.

Its hacks like Macrotastics, College Adjuster, and College Clock that have made it bareable for all of my other sims.  When I fast-foward sims with this I try to make them meet as few people as possible.  Because in the end I'd rather have them be friends with other player sims living in the neighborhood, not smelly dormies and professors.  Some of my sims have around 30 family friends thanks to those guys phone stalking them.

[syberspunk]

what kind of boring ass college did you go to?

j/k. But seriously, aside from the point of simulating going to college, studying and getting a degree, in order to open up new career paths... the flipside is to experience the "fun" of college life, meeting new people, socializing, partying, and "greek life" as well.

People seem to knock Uni so much, but I actually kind of like it myself. *shrugs* I think it's actually kind of cool to live in a dorm with non controllable sims to interact with on a daily basis. But then again, I haven't played the game as extensively as everyone else. So maybe I would get as bored and as frustrated too. Despite several flaws, I kind of like Uni. I mean the basegame has flaws, NL has flaws, EPs will always have something wrong with them. True, the studying aspect of school can be boring, but I like the socializing aspect in general, and I think there is a decent balance between that in the game.

When I'm playing with the intention to get my sims excellent grades, I can easily do that in the first day and a half or so. Even without mods or macrostatics (and I never use College Rampage anyways). And then, I can spend the rest of the semester socializing and "having fun" with my sim. If I feel like making it a bit more of a challenge on myself, then I will only do study related interactions when the sim actually rolls them up. In that way, it is slightly more realistic in that not all sims will get perfect grades.

I'm not looking for the grades to be more difficult to obtain, just for some of my Sims to be less interested in academics so they might not do as well as those dedicated Knowledge Sims.

Maybe it would make more sense knowing the way I play. I prioritize needs over wants over work/school over miscellaneous skilling. When all their wants are school related, they're fulfilling two of those priority levels at the same time, so it takes less time for the grade meter to fill. If I have to spend more time fulfilling non-school related wants before sending them to hit the books, it will be harder for them to get those perfect grades.

I suppose one option is to focus on only non-school wants for the Sims who shouldn't like school so much, and find ways to reroll them when there's nothing but school wants left. Any possible way to add a "reroll all wants" option to the lot debugger?

All of your sims always roll up school related wants despite their aspirations? It's been my experience that, in some cases, some non-Knowledge sims only seem to roll up school related wants after doing some school related things. But not always. Maybe it's just random, but I've had a lot of non-Knowledge sims roll up non school related wants mostly. If you only fulfill those wants, maybe the school related ones won't roll up as much? Or maybe just satisfy them minimally, as soon as they roll up, and they might stop. It could be just luck of the draw I guess. *shrugs*

I think its been said before.  But Uni is only truly usefull for Romance sims with the 20 different woohoo/love LTW's.  Because once they move back to the neighborhood they'll most likely never see a dormie again.

Well... isn't that kind of like real life as well? You go to college, you meet a bunch of new people, but you don't always keep in touch with Everyone, right?

When I fast-foward sims with this I try to make them meet as few people as possible.  Because in the end I'd rather have them be friends with other player sims living in the neighborhood, not smelly dormies and professors.  Some of my sims have around 30 family friends thanks to those guys phone stalking them.

Lol. Well... isn't that your fault for answering the phone? Why not just ignore them until the relationship dies down enough and hopefully they would stop calling.

Ste

[Paperbladder]

I don't even bother with University most of the time.  I found out that most of the Sims that did go to Uni always got worthless wants afterwards about calling their friends.  I just use Pescado's Lot Debugger to give certain sims the extra locks and wants slots.

I believe since I've installed nodormieregen and used deleteallcharacters on my neighborhood before making playable sims, I doubt the thing is even playable in large dorms anymore.  I'd probably have to shove them in private residences or those tiny 4-room dorms.

[cwhitney]

The entire problem with the Uni concept is that, fundamentally, school really isn't all that interesting. Even college. In real life, school is pretty boring, and not a terribly great foundation for a game.

Well, that's your opinion.  Obviously some people are going to find expansion ideas painfully dull, while others will enjoy them.  Still, for the Sims games particularly, some expansions are well suited for some people's playstyles, while being completely useless to how others enjoy their gameplay.  That's been the case with every Sims 1 and Sims 2 expansion, and no doubt that's going to be the case with every future expansion as well.

As for University, I think the issue with the grades comes from the fact that achieving a high GPA is fairly incongruous with the way the Sims 2 has worked.  In this expansion, you had a very specific goal to achieve, with clear guidelines and progress bars, with real (or merely perceived) consequences should you fail to achieve the requisite goals.  I don't consider your sims flunking out after two semesters really "playing" University.  There definitely is an incentive to get high grades.  And the only thing in the original game and Nightlife like it are the party scores and date/outing scores, which really don't punish in the same manner for failure.  (In fact, intending on failing them can be a perfectly legitimate way to play!)  This historically hasn't been the case with the Sims games before.  Sure, you could simply decide to never have your sims gain skill points, so they're always stuck at entry level jobs, and instead concentrate your gameplan on something completely different, like a "battle royale" simulation or trying to woohoo as many sims as possible, or even simply making beautiful houses.  The number of ways you could play the game was limitless.  But the important thing was that there was no overriding "right way" to play.

But that's not really the case with University, as the "right way", or at least the way that allows you to get the most out of the expansion, is to have your sims study the required amount each semester.  The problem is is that there's no countervailing method or methods of playing that would achieve essentially the same thing in a different manner.  (I suppose seducing the professors might be one such way, but I personally would find that even more tiresome (and appalling, considering how hideous most of them are) than the regular way to a 4.0)  If there could be more than one way to "succeed" at University, there may very well be the necessary disincentive to always get your sim students A+'s every semester.  One such way, for example, would be the "Big Wo/Man on Campus" achievement (which isn't that difficult to achieve even maintaining a 4.0 currently).  If achieving that allows interesting gameplay that wouldn't necessarily be allowed with a Summa Cum Laude sim, (and achieving them both would be exceptionally difficult) that could be a good way to get players away from the feeling that studying is the only important thing for your students to do in this expansion.  Or even if that ultimately allows your sims to achieve the same ends, for example, Summa Cum Laude gives good benefits in careers, give Big Wo/Men on Campus those same benefits.  And it could be anything, hustling pool in a certain number of locations, or making a certain amount of money on a certain number of workstations on campus, or making a certain amount of money from multiple locations playing instruments.  If any of these things would allow a player to achieve something similar to what a 4.0 does now, the expansion could very easily be more interesting, especially if Maxis underscores that it's perfectly all right for your sims to graduate with a 3.0, if they manage to excel in other areas.

But in the actual game, there is no countervailing desire to achieve anything but perfect grades.  Yes, you could achieve aspirations, especially the more difficult ones, but that's not the same thing.  The game doesn't really punish you all that much for ignoring them most of the time.  There really isn't anything to compete with grades.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Except perhaps when a Popularity sim with the 20 best friends LTW has reached 19 and one more will make them permaplat before they even graduate!  After which, you can force them to concentrate on their studies and get to graduate SCL without worrying about them going in the red because they just want to play with half a dozen of their friends!

[syberspunk]

@cwhitney

While I agree with what you said about different aspects of different EPs appealing to different people and styles of gameplay, I don't necessarily agree with the idea that earning 4.0s is the be all/end all of the Uni EP, and that the game is "punishing" you for Not acheiving a 4.0. You can get through the game just fine without needing a 4.0. I haven't tried it myself yet, but I imagine that you should still be able to graduate with at least a C average (if not, that would be pretty stupidly unrealistic ).

There are at least 4 ways to make it through Uni:

1) Skill building and Grade building yourself
2) Using your influence to make others build up your grade for you (takes a bit longer for obvious reasons)
3) Romanticizing professors
4) Befriending professors. You can socialize with profs and still build your grade meter without necessarily woohooing them (although I imagine woohooing probably builds the meter faster).

But... as I was saying, Uni doesn't have to be solely about grades, graduating, and getting a diploma. I think it is up to the individual's personal style of play and imagination. You can just go to Uni to achieve those "impossible" wants of 10, 20, 30 best friends or lovers. I think it is certainly easier to do in Uni with all those dormies running around.

I'm not sure how the game "punishes" for you not achieving 4.0s. I like to think of it more as "rewarding" you with other opportunities and experiences that your sims otherwise would not have if they didn't go to Uni. And those other wants, like being Big Wo/Man on Campus or joining a Greek House or Secret Society are just extra "challenges" that adds a bit more to playing Uni.

If any of these things would allow a player to achieve something similar to what a 4.0 does now, the expansion could very easily be more interesting, especially if Maxis underscores that it's perfectly all right for your sims to graduate with a 3.0, if they manage to excel in other areas.

This seems to imply that it "isn't" all right to graduate with a 3.0. Is there something that I'm not aware of? What are the drawbacks of doing this? Aside from not achieving those wants to be on the dean's list all the time, or to graduate summa cum laude or whatever. I would think that graduating should open up those Uni careers, and any variation may be in what level you start at on that career track based on your GPA? I actually don't know myself since I haven't played the game long enough. So it'd be great if someone could explain to me if there is any significant difference. Do sims that don't graduate with a 4.0 do not have the new career paths unlocked for them? That is the only thing I can imagine that migh be considered punishment so severe as to define only one "right way" to play the game.

Otherwise, if this is not the case, then who is to say that the only "right way" to play is to get a 4.0? Why wouldn't I be able to take advantage of the other things that the Uni EP offers (living with and socializing with dormies/YAs, interacting with all those weird, amusing, and annoying Uni NPCs, makin' a band with those Uni instruments, fulfilling LTWs to "put an end" to the Aspiration game, building Influence and making others do things for you, trying to qualify for as many scholarships as possible, etc.) I've enjoyed all of those things in the regular 'hood, for a long time before I even set foot onto a Uni lot. But then again, I am a super slow player.

Ste

[Sandilou]

The most enjoyable gameplay I've had with TS2 Uni was playing a Popularity Sim at a Greek house.  As soon as she'd gone to her first lecture, she rang one of the professors, and, thanks to JM's phone hack, that took care of her grades.  After that, all she had to do was automatically attend a couple of lectures.  Being a Popularity sim meant that she kept wanting to throw parties.  Chuck in a couple of LizzLove's waterbeds and Uni comes into its own - literally!

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, in my first attempt to play the Bright household, Jane Stacks never got up to a 4.0, no matter how hard she tried, and neither she or Martin graduated summa cum laude, but they still got good jobs and were happy together!

[PlayLives]

I just started sending sims to college and out 3 out of 8 are the only ones that roll wants to complete assignment, go to class, study, etc. They all had wants to go to college accept 1 (Pleasure) but once there, only the knowlege sims want to do college stuff. Everyone else wants to have a party, go on date, etc. I thought it was weired that they didn't want to do work. LOL.
I have
3 - Knowledge
2 - Popular
1 - Family
1 - Pleasure
1 - Romance

[J. M. Pescado]

what kind of boring ass college did you go to?

j/k. But seriously, aside from the point of simulating going to college, studying and getting a degree, in order to open up new career paths... the flipside is to experience the "fun" of college life, meeting new people, socializing, partying, and "greek life" as well.

You can get more than you can stand of that in relatively short order: There's only so many people in your neighborhood and it doesn't take that long to hit 100/100 from a good running start, particularly if they already knew each other from teens.

People seem to knock Uni so much, but I actually kind of like it myself. *shrugs* I think it's actually kind of cool to live in a dorm with non controllable sims to interact with on a daily basis.

I dunno if it's so much "interact with" as it is "laugh at", which is pretty funny, too, seeing as when they lose their invulnerability, the dormies bungling mismanagements are actually kinda funny to watch. As opposed to the endless instrument bogarting and perpetual study that they'd otherwise do since they never have to stop.

When I'm playing with the intention to get my sims excellent grades, I can easily do that in the first day and a half or so. Even without mods or macrostatics (and I never use College Rampage anyways).

That is because College Rampage will not, in any way, really enhance your ability to gain grades if you already know how to go about doing it, since it'll just queue the exact same commands. The only real benefit is that you can play through that by just mashing 3 and waiting as your sims run through the necessary motions directed by a predefined set of rules, instead of all that manual clicking. I already broke my mouse several times from that sort of thing.

Maybe it would make more sense knowing the way I play. I prioritize needs over wants over work/school over miscellaneous skilling.

Eh, that's a terrible work ethic. Didn't your parents ever teach you "Work before play"? No wonder people these days are such lazy slackers. Why, in my day, we'd have had you shot.

I suppose one option is to focus on only non-school wants for the Sims who shouldn't like school so much, and find ways to reroll them when there's nothing but school wants left. Any possible way to add a "reroll all wants" option to the lot debugger?

There is such a command available in the game, but it doesn't so much reroll wants as it does refresh them. Which usually means the exact same things come back up in a slightly different order.

All of your sims always roll up school related wants despite their aspirations? It's been my experience that, in some cases, some non-Knowledge sims only seem to roll up school related wants after doing some school related things. But not always. Maybe it's just random, but I've had a lot of non-Knowledge sims roll up non school related wants mostly. If you only fulfill those wants, maybe the school related ones won't roll up as much? Or maybe just satisfy them minimally, as soon as they roll up, and they might stop. It could be just luck of the draw I guess. *shrugs*

The school based wants, if a sim manifests them, tend to keep on coming until they max the meter. If anything, you're essentially goaded into either doing it, or not doing it at all, sims rarely run in between.

[syberspunk]

You can get more than you can stand of that in relatively short order: There's only so many people in your neighborhood and it doesn't take that long to hit 100/100 from a good running start, particularly if they already knew each other from teens.

True... but I like the idea of having several sims to socialize with. In the regular 'hood, it's a tad boring. It's the same ole fugly sims walking by every day or the same ones that everyone brings home the same people (when a lot of them have the same career track) all the time. Which is okay, I guess, since it gives the regular 'hood a small town feel to it. At least with Uni and now NL, there's slightly more variety, even if they're all still pretty fugly.

I dunno if it's so much "interact with" as it is "laugh at", which is pretty funny, too, seeing as when they lose their invulnerability, the dormies bungling mismanagements are actually kinda funny to watch. As opposed to the endless instrument bogarting and perpetual study that they'd otherwise do since they never have to stop.

Well "pointing and laughing at" is still a great way to enjoy the game. And I have to admit, the dormie deaths can be a tad fun. To me, it's not become a random game, sort of like a variation of russian roulette. It's only a matter of time before they start dropping like flies. So it's a guess as to which dormies my playable sims manage to build up friendships with long enough to be able to save them. If I save them, great! I find that whole bit amusing, with them keeling over after coming back from class and a whole crowd gathers. And then I save them and everyone goes back to playing kicky bag or Hanging Out. Or even if they die, it's still amusing because a new victim comes along to take their place. The grave is hardly cold and they're already being replaced. Sometimes the death happens when my sim isn't home to save them. Oh well. lol. That's a shame, sorry I was too busy in class or taking a final exam to help you out.

The instrument bogarting is kind of funny to me. Lately, I haven't seen that sims will always want to play them tho. I think the nouniprotect kinda makes them try to pee and eat more,  or fight for any open beds rather than the instruments. Or... it could be the hot tub I put on the roof instead. I don't mind the constant studying as it does help simulate college life a little, but at least with my hack in place, once they've actually filled up their meters, they'll stop litering the dorms with their assignments.

That is because College Rampage will not, in any way, really enhance your ability to gain grades if you already know how to go about doing it, since it'll just queue the exact same commands. The only real benefit is that you can play through that by just mashing 3 and waiting as your sims run through the necessary motions directed by a predefined set of rules, instead of all that manual clicking. I already broke my mouse several times from that sort of thing.

Lol. Well... maybe if you should ease off on the pressure there. You know you really don't have to press the button that hard for it to work, as frustrating as the game might be. Macrostatics is great for the few times where I don't want to be a mouse-button clicking nazi, but I kind of like to pour over the details and minutae sometimes. Micromanaging can be a pain in the ass, sure, but as far as my regular game goes, since a lot of the time I'm trying to make my sims as similar to their real life inspirations, I'm kind of a stickler about managing almost every interaction except for taking care of some of the very basic needs, which is why I love the bathroomusesyou and the socializing macros.

The school based wants, if a sim manifests them, tend to keep on coming until they max the meter. If anything, you're essentially goaded into either doing it, or not doing it at all, sims rarely run in between.

I've had some experience where it's been somewhat random. I've had sims get the school related wants, and then suddenly just roll them all away, even if I wasn't completely done building the meter. Usually it's Romance or Popularity sims (at least before NL, I haven't really played much since I've installed NL) who suddenly get fixated on socialing or romanticating their current obsessions rather than getting back to the school work.

Ste

[HelloKit]

Maybe it would make more sense knowing the way I play. I prioritize needs over wants over work/school over miscellaneous skilling.

Eh, that's a terrible work ethic. Didn't your parents ever teach you "Work before play"? No wonder people these days are such lazy slackers. Why, in my day, we'd have had you shot.

LOL. It's funny how our personal philosophies in life seep even into our make-believe gameplay. I actually have a terrific work ethic - during the hours that I am paid to work. But outside of those hours, my time is mine, and my needs and wants, and those of my loved ones, come first above all else. I think people who spend their unpaid time continuing to worry about work are missing what they were really put here for.

I always send my working Sims to work when they are supposed to be there, but outside of that time, they don't put effort into promotions, etc. (unless that is what they want) until they and their family members are happy. My goal isn't to have all rich, career-maxed Sims... it's to see where their own personalities and aspirations take them. As far as college students go, I was that age not very long ago, and I definitely know that, had I gone to college, I certainly would have done what I wanted before studying to appease the faculty and parents. It's a selfish age, and the first time in your life when school is optional and you are free to make your own decisions, so of course you're going to take advantage of that. So I play my Uni Sims the same way, assuming that's how they would behave - those Sims who want the good grades, either for the knowledge or the money-making potential later on, would want to work hard, and those whose ambitions lie elsewhere would focus on those ambitions and less on schoolwork.