Buying item in a shop doesn't fulfill want

[Karen]

I had a Fortune Sim with a want for an expensive TV, so I sent him to a community lot owned by another of my families.  He bought the most expensive Maxis TV (the flat screen wall-mounted model), paid for it, and went home.  The want was still locked.  I took the TV out of his inventory and put it in the house.  Still nothing.  I deleted the TV he'd just purchased, placed an identical one on the lot in Buy mode, and only then did the want get fulfilled.

Does anyone know of a hack/workaround for this?  If buying a cell phone on a community lot will satisfy the "buy a cell phone" want, why can't you do the same for other objects, at least if they're Maxis-made?

Karen

[Ancient Sim]

It ought to work, even if it doesn't.  Let's face it, if I wanted to buy a tv (which quite recently I did), I would go to a shop selling TVs and buy one.  I wouldn't expect to get home with said TV and find myself still wanting to buy one.  What I certainly wouldn't do is look in a catalogue, choose a TV and have it appear mysteriously beside me.  The former is far more realistic, so it makes no sense that it doesn't satisfy the want.  No doubt it's yet another thing they 'forgot' to do.

[lindaetterlee]

I have noticed this as well. It is quite annoying. Pisses me off usually.

[Regina]

Well, that figures, doesn't it?  Maybe it has to do with the way the whole inventory and their objects work.

For example, a sim rolls a want to buy an expensive game, so you buy them a bowling alley which fulfills the want.  You don't have any place to put it so you stick it in their inventory.  Later on, they re-roll the want to buy one because it's no longer on their lot.  If you then take it from their inventory and place it, the want isn't fulfilled, but replaced by a new want.

[sara_dippity]

I think it has to do with new wants, related to the shopping need, and maybe to the desires that sims assess with the business reward. I noticed that one sim I have went shopping in his sister's store, when I was playing her, not him. When I loaded his house, for a split second I saw new icons for wants, some that I had never seen before but there was a purchase thing on them. They immediately rolled right back to what they were before I left the house. I don't think I was supposed to see them. It seems that fufilling those wants might fill the invisible shopping meter, and the highest scoring one is the desire assesed. I thing, totally a guess from a non file-peeking person.
Anyway, I think shopping at business lots fufills that family of wants and not the normal want system, I think they are seperate. I also think part of the reason is so that when one of those wants is fufilled, when we load our sim's houses again, it goes back to the wants they had before, like with my sim.

[Regina]

That's interesting.  I hadn't thought very much about that.  Occasionally I'll grab a shopping sim with the mind control mirror so I don't steer them in the direction of buying a half-dozen more of something they already have but I didn't look at their wants.

However, last night I used Inge's shrub to move in a teen Townie (have no idea where he came from--neighborhood wiped clean with DeleteAllCharacters and out of nowhere comes this teen!) so I could send him to college with the little gal he swept off her feet (oh, sure, I can do it the in-game way, but this way he gets all those nifty scholarships).  As soon as I moved him in, I noticed he had a want to buy a robot.  I haven't seen any wants like that playing normally, although I haven't taken many of my sims shopping at other sim's businesses, either.

[gypsylady]

I had a sim in regular play roll up the want to buy a robot. He also had the reg. wants to buy a fridge and bathtub etc. when I first moved him into his new home.He is the only one so far that I have ever had roll this want.

[cwykes]

So there's a whole set of hidden shopping wants and when you fulfill the big Desires, you bump the shoppers into platinum mood which might explain why they hang around happily for ages when they are done shopping!   

So you don't think fulfilling shoppers' wants affects their aspiration status on their own lot?  That makes sense or all these shopaholics would be in platinum when you finally went to play their lots.   BUT, I played the Jacquets last night and they had the most amazing collection of junk in their inventories from all their visits to my other sims' shops.  They also had nice full aspiration bars which surprised me.  I don't think I played them before 'cos the welcome wagon turned up, so they should have been in Green not platinum..

Unfortunatlely Assess Desire has never worked for me - and a few others have said the same.  I show the Sim what the game tells me they want and they don't want it!  Maybe I'm doing something wrong during the sell (Sims in a bad mood?)   I was just wondering if there was anything glitchy there.  Has anyone had a want come up for something in another shop?  If there are wants for Robots in a flower shop, I wonder if Assess Desire tells you correctly or picks something at random in your shop.  Someone did say to watch for the thought bubbles because they tell you what the sim wants.

Thanks for warning me about stuff in the inventory not satisfying wants.

[jsalemi]

Of course, you could always enable the boolprop testing cheats and CTRL-click on the want to fulfill it in cases like this...

(Edited to put in the right keystrokes... )

[Ruann]

I would think that those wants would roll up when your Sim goes to a lot to go shopping.  You can probably also see them if you make a shopper selectable, but who knows.

I do know that visiting playables can get aspirations fulfilled.  I tend to lock Dustin Broke's First Kiss want when I first load that lot and lock one or more (via Upgrade) of Brandi's child-skill teaching wants, flip to the Pleasant Lot, and let Dustin get his First Kiss (and Platinum Aspiration) there.  Flip back to the Broke lot and let Dustin go to school in Platinum.  Anal?  Oh yeah.  Helpful?  Big time.  Instant Smart Milk in the Broke house.

I haven't really played without the No Playable Shoppers hack in, so I don't know if the playables are getting actual Aspiration boosts while shopping.  And since nobody in my current neighborhood is rich enough to stick a money order in their inventory, it'll be a while before I find out.

[sara_dippity]

So there's a whole set of hidden shopping wants and when you fulfill the big Desires, you bump the shoppers into platinum mood which might explain why they hang around happily for ages when they are done shopping!   

So you don't think fulfilling shoppers' wants affects their aspiration status on their own lot? 

Actually I think these wants fufill the shopping desire. Again with the totally random spectulation on it, but it would make sense. Not that everything Maxis does makes sense, mind you.