Myths, Urban Legends, And Apocrypha Of TS2 Explored And Exploded

[Soylent Sim]

I haven't tested this with pets, but in OFB I had a family where I wanted to try raising them to perfect personality.  Since the older sibling had time to kill in college, he would often invite the younger sibling over and mass-encourage her.  Once I got back to the main lot, the personality changes did indeed show.

[miros]

The hood reset caused by the EP install will cause all 'stuck' sims to 'unstick'. This has always happened. Now whether they really fixed the 'bug' and no new toddlers will 'stick' is another story.

I suspect they have... 8 bottles of Smart Milk fed and counting, none stuck yet...

[RainbowTigress]

Of all the bugs they could fix!  They broke things in this EP and left other things broken, just like they have before.  But they would be sure to fix the one but that people actually want.    I have yet to test this myself, but I know that the option on the Lot Debugger to "Make Me Smart" still works.

[twojeffs]

You expected anything less? The one bug in the game they could legitimately get away with calling a 'feature' and they fix it (allegedly). My guess would be that if they did fix it, they did it unintentionally. A two wrongs make a right sort of thing.

[RainbowTigress]

You expected anything less?

No, not anymore.  But it still pisses me off.    I'll have to check this one out for myself, though.

[J. M. Pescado]

Still works for me. Nuked a baby, fast-forwarded until glow faded, still 300. Grew it up, still 300.

[RainbowTigress]

Same here.

[cwykes]

I tried using Macro > Encourage with some grandparents and their grandchildren, but it never seemed to have any effect.  I checked on the children's personality points by making them selectable, and it never made a difference even if I let them go at it for several hours.

DK why it works for me but not you.... unless mine is hacked and yours isn't or vice versa.  The hack that springs to mind is comm-skilling.  I have it - do you?  I'm sure this works for me, or I was until you said it didn't.. now I've got to go and do it all over again.

[RainbowTigress]

I'm not sure, it was quite a while back, pre-OFB.  I'm not sure if I had NL at the time.  But I never tried again because it seemed futile.

[J. M. Pescado]

Comm-skilling doesn't affect encouraging, but encourages tend to not be very powerful unless the age difference is large (teens and adults are MUCH less malleable than children!), and the sim doing the encouraging is strong in that trait. 6 points of something may be enough to encourage it, but not very well. A 10 works faster. Also, some traits are more encouragable than others due to the length of their practice animations. Active is easy to encourage. Outgoing is hard. In order to encourage some traits, you have to isolate them from all other sims, or they'll try to harass those sims to "practice".

[cwykes]

The age difference is why grandparents are good for encouraging, but I didn't realise that the number of active points made a difference.  Thanks for that useful fact! 

So am I right that it works if Grandparents invive a grandchild over and encourage them - or is Rainbow right and I'm delusional?  Do personality points earned on another lot stick?

[GayJohnScarritt]

The age difference is why grandparents are good for encouraging, but I didn't realise that the number of active points made a difference.  Thanks for that useful fact! 

So am I right that it works if Grandparents invive a grandchild over and encourage them - or is Rainbow right and I'm delusional?  Do personality points earned on another lot stick?

  I too await with baited breath the ultimate decision.  Before, encouraging a 0 or 1 to a 6 was hard enough, as the child was usually low in green/tired/needing to eat and that was satisfactory to me.  Now, if i can have my Permaplat-grandparents invite over a grandchild, i won't have to worry about their moods, and can get some of those personality points to a 10.

[cwykes]

why would you want them all at 10?  OK - I understand the  "it's there and I want to max it!", but stop for a moment and think about what kind of sim you are going to end up with....  he's so extrovert, he's can't stand to be on his own doing something for more than 5 mins.  he's so playful, he'll upset total strangers by trying to play with them and he's so neat he can't rest until the house is perfect even if it was good already!  I can live with hyperactive and hypernice, but the others.... NO WAY.  I get them to 6 so they can encourage their own kids if they have any and that's it!

[GayJohnScarritt]

and can get some of those personality points to a 10.

   My apoligies, i should have been more specific.   I don't want 10 playful, as that (to me) is the main reason stopping meditation.  I love Outgoing sims, active sims and nice sims.  Playful?  6 would be more than satisfactory to me.  Also a 6 or 7 in neatness fits my play style, i can't stand a sim who doesn't flush.   

[miros]

Still works for me. Nuked a baby, fast-forwarded until glow faded, still 300. Grew it up, still 300.

Ok, the dice gods must hate me in multiple games this week.

[Motoki]

I had a sim once who I had max all his personality traits through encouraging. I actually rather liked him. I'm not saying I want every sim like that, but I never really had any problems with him. And he was awesome at encouraging other family members in any trait because he had them all maxed.

[J. M. Pescado]

I had a sim once who I had max all his personality traits through encouraging. I actually rather liked him. I'm not saying I want every sim like that, but I never really had any problems with him. And he was awesome at encouraging other family members in any trait because he had them all maxed.

I dunno if maximizing ALL personality traits is a good thing. Unless you count maximizing GROUCHINESS...the inverse personality traits are sometimes better than the pointed-ones! And some personality traits are just a tradeoff between two equally valid points and aren't really better or worse at any value.

[Motoki]

I mostly just wanted to see if I could do it. I thought he would be annoying but he honestly wasn't. I've had sims with lower or more moderate personality traits far more annoying than him.

I also had one sim in town who was mean as hell. She was always getting in fights and stirring shit up and this was before NL even. I though she had to be a 0 nice but she was a 4. Go figure. She was meaner than the sims I had in town with less nice points than her.

[J. M. Pescado]

Quantity of nice points doesn't really influence too much. It's more or less a binary quantity: Either a sim is grouchy, and therefore has < 5(00) nice points, or has that or more, and is therefore a "nice" sim who will not choose mean actions. Finer gradation of niceness affect other factors, such as reaction to Evil Jack-in-the-Boxen, but otherwise have minimal influence on a sim's day to day behavior.

[cwykes]

So am I right that it works if Grandparents invive a grandchild over and encourage them - or is Rainbow right and I'm delusional?  Do personality points earned on another lot stick?

so come on guys - what is the truth here?  and has it changed since base game?

[J. M. Pescado]

It should. But encouraging is a very slow process and when doing it to visitors, you don't really get any feedback of when to stop.

[GayJohnScarritt]

It should. But encouraging is a very slow process and when doing it to visitors, you don't really get any feedback of when to stop.

   Sounds like we need a hack for a progress bar.   

[Soylent Sim]

Just to experiment, I made a sample family, moved the elder out, and had her invite and mass-encourage the broodling.  Encouragement was still available, and had effects when I checked back in on the home lot.  Furthermore, when the trait is maxed out (or minned out, for those of you who prefer it that way), you lose the option to encourage for that trait, so you can tell when you've reached what you want.

Actually adding a personality trait progress bar might be stymied by the dual nature of encouraging.  You want to keep track of the progress towards a new point, but you also want to keep track of it point by point if you want to fine-tune personalities.

[cwykes]

It should. But encouraging is a very slow process and when doing it to visitors, you don't really get any feedback of when to stop.

thanks for confirming that.  You usually have to stop when the grandparents need the bathroom or the kids go home because it's bedtime, so I haven't hit "not knowing when to stop" as a practical problem! 

[dream_operator]

Actually I once made two sims and by cheating gave one maxed out points in every personality trait and the other no points in every personality trait.  I just wanted to see what they would be like.  I thought that I would hate the one with no persoanlity points, but he ended up being one of my favorite sims.  He was way better than his wife who was the maxed out sim.  The wants he rolled were a lot better than her wants too and he was the better parent and spouse when acting autonomously.  I suspect it was because he didn't have every fun and dirty item in the house competing for his attention, so he focused more on his family members.  Plus being serious he would rather autonomously kiss and make out with his wife instead of autonomouly play red hands with her (which was her preferred method of showing love ).  It was an eye opener and changed what I thought of as positive and negative traits in the game.

Dream