I’ve moved to something I call character based gameplay, which I consider an expansion of wants based. I still pay attention to their wants and try to fulfill them. But I pay more attention to their overall personality, aspirations, hobbies and traits (from 3t2 traits). When their wants are boring or repetitive to me, I make decisions on what to do with their life based on their personality. Then the decisions don’t feel like something I’m picking completely randomly, it’s in keeping with character so it feels organic. Also, PREACH about untuned ACR! If people love the drama and the many babies then great, but it’s frustrating when people complain about those aspects when it’s completely tuneable.
This is also how I play too. I love wants based gameplay, but it needed the extra layer of depth this play style provides in my opinion. Also, I don't like the sims 4 due to its lack of gameplay and how buggy it is. I never could get past those enough to even delve into the lore. In the sims 2 and sims 3, the sims feel like people who you're trying to help figure out life. The sims 4 feels like your playing with dolls.
I agree with this sm. I would like to add that a lot of wants-based players love to play the premade sims, but they don't realize that what makes the premade sims so special is their unique storylines which couldn't have been created through wants-based play (for example, the Beakers and Nervous), and their character depth. So then, when the generation of premades dies off, the next generation of sims will have no character depth -- they will just be one dimensional characters whose story and personality is solely composed of their aspiration and their one true hobby.
You're absolutely right. Lots of stuff related to the sims lore was done through cheats. Especially the relationships. That's why I don't mind tweaking them here and there whenever I feel it might help the story.
Also you create character depth by playing. I've never had any struggle at all playing the next generation of the Sims. Once again most people don't go strictly by wants. They incorporate those ones and use them.
Wants-based play style does get repetitive very quickly because you end up doing the same thing over and over again. It's especially noticeable when playing toddlers and child sims. It's like eating the same cereal every single day of your life, it gets boring. At least in the Sims 3 you can dismiss the wants you don't care about or that don't make much sense to you.
The comparison with cereal was in my head too 👍🏼 The same cereal: breakfast, lunch and dinner. And yes, overall wants-based play style is MUCH more suitable for The Sims 3, because everyday wants depend on individual lifetime wish and personality traits.
I don't watch that much TS2 gameplays outside of Marticore's and maybe kattay's, but personally I think a good balance could be the key for some. I like Sims 2 for it's own autonomy, and i sometimes take their wants into consideration (especially if they're like crazy ones, as an example Dina rolled a want right after Mortimers death to romance Alexander - her step-son.), but truly where the game becomes so much fun is when you add your imagination into it. 2 Examples, one from my old Pleasantview where I paired up Don with Brandi and one in Strangetown, where I made Olive "kill" the Beakers for Nervouses escape where it orphaned their child in the process and create a generational murder mystery and seak for revenge storyline. And none of these scenarios would be possible if i stuck to the wants based system. Anyways, very good video and an interesting insight. xx
I think the major issue with a wants based system is that it sets sims up for success by default. They will have aspirations that match their personality, avoid bad things happening to them easily, etc. It would be interesting if the knowledge/fortune sim is lazy and that actual *hinders* their success? Or mean and/or shy popularity/romance sims also would also be interesting. It would be interesting for a romance sim to have a secondary family aspiration (or vice versa) so they’ll have conflicting wants and fears. I think what’s interesting about Sims 2 is all the differences aspects of Sims that combine differently. Why limit those combinations and just make all the sims carbon copies? Edit: I also think an important thing you can do that reduces overpopulation is oftentimes ignored: plenty of mods allow you to townify playable sims. This reduces the number of households you rotate to a constant number, while you can still keep the sims around!
I agree. Happy sim sometimes equals boring sim. Even in that into to the game (not sure how to call it) a lot of sims are experiencing aspiration failure (one sim is begging for money in the street, the other one is cuddling a flour sack baby and three sims at once are being visited by a therapist). And the intro was meant to show the most interesting aspects of the game like age transitioning, toddlers etc. Aspiration failures were also a big chunk of the new content.
The amount of times I've tired to watch a let's play and just can't finish it because the player keeps saying they wish X exciting thing would happen, but don't do it because it's not in the wants panel... The worst for me is when creators get so excited for Mary Sue to catch Daniel cheating, but because their relationship is so low and ACR largely remains untuned, she never cares! So boring to watch.
I love this! I hate how wants based is talked about almost as an ethical choice. The game encourages you to fulfill wants every now and then anyway unless you want constant aspiration failure, thinking of the sim as a character and what fits that characterisation makes a lot more sense than just fulfilling wants. Same with aspirations, thinking of what seems to actually suit the sim and what you want to do makes a lot more sense. I love having shy popularity sims or any other a bit contradictory combination. It also makes it easier to interpret different sims’ wants in different ways.
Literally no one cares if you do wants based play style or not. No one is shaming you literally no one cares about this. Y'all created an entire idea in your head that simply isn't what wants based play is.😮
I totally agree with this! Wants based is great but it can hardly drive the story. Your comment on the shy popularity sim reminded me of this custom world I downloaded...I think it's called Paradise. The first pre-made family there has a relatively shy mom with a popularity aspiration and almost no friends outside her house. It made no sense at first but looking into her other areas: oceanography career with 0 interest points in the environment....I almost wanted to change her career to sports cuz fitness is her OTH...but decided she was simply a wannabe. The shy girl that wanted to be in with the popular girls and since she lived on an island (her workaholic husband's idea to settle down there), she thought being in the oceanography career would help her fit in/make friends. The wannabe aspect of her also explains why she's in denial about her husband cheating and trying to keep up appearances and continue acting like they are a happy family. Honestly, they've become my favorite family on the island since I leaned into the contradictions. I'm letting a mix of their wants and automous actions decide if they will stay together or divorce.
another super important point: it makes sims happy all the time. i somewhat abandoned the wants-based playstyle just so they could have mental breaks more often
I see what you mean but I think the game itself is just delightfully unpredictable at it's core so with the right mods and such wants based really works for me. This comment made me laugh because it reminded me of Bianca Monty in my current megahood. Poor girl has tried to kiss Oberon Summerdream multiple times due to ACR and has so many memories about being rejected and having mental breakdowns. Titania of course no longer fucks with her. She's even tried to do this while I'm not playing her - it's always Oberon. I sent her out for like, two whole five day rotations when she wasn't at work trying to find her someone she actually liked to fall in love with and marry like her wants say, since she clearly really desires a family. However, it just wasn't happening because due to my turn on and turn offs mod being pretty different (a lot more personality/interest based options than physical) she hasn't liked anyone that much (and I haven't really liked anyone who isn't already taken with her either, certainly not enough to break up relationships I think should stay together) to roll wants to pursue them specifically and now she's halfway through adulthood. I decided to move her in with Kent (who is ofc gay in my game, so ACR won't pair them) who has been seeing different sims but hasn't gotten the want to settle down with any of them. Next time I get to her in my rotations I'm going to have her adopt and they'll raise the kids together as roommates, but I'm not going to give up on fulfilling her wants to fall in love and get married. It just might come later in life. This is just an example of how I let wants based gameplay decide my stories for me.
Super agree with this take! Wants-based is boring in the long run. Some of us have played this game since release, I can't imagine replaying the same scenarios over and over again. I pay attention to their wants but I prefer coming up with unique stories and scenarios. 12:20 agree with this so much!!! As an astro girlie the zodiac sign compatibility is my sims 2 villain origin story 😅 I detach the zodiac signs from the aspirations and personality points for this reason. This way every sim is different!
Oh my god i could not agree more with most of your points! I tried to play purely wants based, I really did, but its so much less interesting than making up your own story based on your own perception of the sims. I ESPECIALLY hate that contrived secondary aspiration calculator that everyone loves to use, specifically because it assigns romance to sims that were clearly written to be wholesome family sim like Jill Smith and John Burb. I hate how John gets such a bad rap in the community, ONLY BECAUSE people treat the aspiration calculator like its cannon, when its not, and they act like being a cheater is his singular, defining personality trait.
I feel like assigning aspirations to zodiac signs is like still okay and alright you know. But choosing the secondary aspiration based on the interests and using a calculator never made sense to me bc 1. it is COMPLETELY fanmade and made up and 2. the interests of the Sims can change throughout their life (if I remeber correctly)
tbf there's so many different ones to choose from. I felt the same about romance secondaries if we're talking about the pleasantsims calculator but found one I liked (as in, it mostly gives me secondary aspirations that I agree with or find interesting) that also calculates 3t2 traits - which is great because it makes me use traits I probably wouldn't have picked out myself. speaking of, I use that to make sure all of my romance sims aren't the same cheater blueprint since the hopeless romantic trait gets rid of cheating wants.
I definitely agree with your opinion on untuned acr. It annoys me so much how people constantly break sims characters and have babies constantly for the sake of drama.
I can't help but feel as if Cindy accidentally created this culture of new Sims 2 players that NEED their hand held and to be told what to do, or else they CANNOT enjoy an open-ended life simulator. I'm also very glad that you called out untuned ACR, because everything I see involving that mod looks like a nightmare to play with. Way too many babies, very high potential of inbreeding, and, ironically, it takes away the player agency and control that strictly wants-based gives you.
I'm one of those people... or at least I used to be. I installed the game because of Cindy and started playing the way she did, but have found my own style over the years. I still play wants based, but I definitely will ignore wants if they don't line up with my storylines, and similarly I'll do things they don't want if I think it'll be more fun. I don't play premades though, so I've never fallen into the trap of just copying let's plays. My sims are all mine, with their own unique storylines, motivations, dreams, etc. Cindy was a great re-introduction to the game but I definitely suggest people try to find their own play style instead of following her ruleset word for word. Happy simming!
Very good points! That's why I have a set of rules to cure my indecisiveness, but bend them if need be. I'm an observer, so I also try to look at the tendencies a certain Sim shows me e.g. in their childhood and make note of them. I also came up with a little different aspiration assigning method that ignores zodiac signs and focuses more on personality points. With exceptions, of course (Sims' vibes and backgrounds are important, I also often try to not give the kids exactly the same aspirations as the parents because I'm aware of the genetic personality). Interests are importatnt because I need them to do something in the game except chat results... So I assign jobs based on interests but it only makes sense with the "no aged interests" mod, otherwise it will be repetitive as hell. I think a lot of wants-based players ditch hobbies because without any mods for it, the wants become all about hobbies. To me, the OTH of a Sim is rather important and I have a special collection in my buy mode with all the hobby-related objects to choose something for most Sims. And I think people who don't tone down ACR, never played a neighborhood long enough to deal with overpopulation 😅 I can't imagine having risky woohoo set to more than 2% (it's usually 0) and auto TFB enabled. I've had an overpopulated Pleasantview even before ACR because I was baby-crazy, and I am just now (after 10 years since I started it) getting to cut down the number of families for this neighborhood to be playable again. I'd never do an uberhood though, my limit is 16 families. But the "Extended Family Treated as Family" mod is crucial to avoid inbreeding. But well, I'm not exactly a wants-based player, I guess I'm like... half? 😆 If a Sim has nothing to do, I'll look at their wants. I also like to use the *lack* of wants to *not* do something, like hardly any Sim in my game will reach the career top (usually fortune and knowledge Sims, so that's also repetitive... well). I don't care when Sims want babies, I have my own system of how many kids they will have and when. I'll lock these wants if I plan a baby for them soon because it's a big want. University is very wants-based for me though because I desperately needed variety in that area. And now, graduating with honors is extremely rare because man, Sims are laaaazy 😆 And even in a half-wants-based gameplay, my Sims are often unhappy... lmao. I barely watched any of Cindy's let's plays but wow... that Bobby thing must've been really disappointing! Such an interesting Sim with the two aspirations. I love secondary aspirations and give them to Sims when they become adults to expand their personality (not based on interests though, that's stupid lmao). The only thing I don't really agree with here is the Romance Sims... even if you imagine they're looking for a soulmate, they will roll wants to woohoo with multiple Sims and have a negative memory of getting married etc. I really wish this aspiration was more nuanced.
For your last point, I play with the hopeless romantic trait mod, so it stops romance wants from rolling for specific sims! I only have a handful of those traits and they r so helpful cuz i'm a player who needs to see their hc actually reflected in the game otherwise it takes me out from it lol
OMG, Marticore herself! (shaking like the Sims 3 sims when they see a celebrity).😱 I believe all aspirations could be more nuanced: for example, it would be fun to play a family sim who's really close with their parents and doesn't want to leave their family nest. But all family sims seem to want is to become independent asap. But either way, for a 2004 game the Sims 2 already has a TON of ways to make sims interesting.
Thats, why I love to watch Your gameplays. Either on eng or pl channel. They're just not as the others. I even tried to look for other gameplays, but I only have bunch of people that I really like to watch.
I feel like a lot more players should also add the premade Sims from the college worlds. Like so many people say themselves that Sim State University is supposedly the matching university of Pleasantview but then never add the universities premade Sims to Pleasantview. I mean yeah that would be a lot of Sims but still. Or marrying of the Sims to the townies of Pleasantview
@@Fizzypopization understandable but if you want sth completely new and fresh (like new potential love interests or parents in the main neighbourhood) then it is some necessary work to do
I'm a simmer who loves playing by rules and systems, and I outgrew Cindy's system pretty quickly. I still do wants based play for the most part but the biggest factor in my gameplay is unpredictability. I'll assign random zodiacs and aspirations on the fly for varieties sake, and do my own stories if something happens that inspires it, but I find if I micromanage to make big sweeping decisions for my sims they don't feel like their own characters, they feel passive, like dolls in a dollhouse, which isn't how I enjoy playing the game. I tend to get bored of them way faster than I do playing wants-based.
I whole-heartedly agree with you. While wants are a good guide, especially when you don't have any particular ideas for a Sim, it shouldn't be the only factor in driving our Sims lives. I used to use Cindy's aspiration calculator style and did notice how one-note some of my Sims were becoming. For my gameplay nowadays, I randomize their interests upon becoming teens (because we all like different things than we did as little kids, right?) and I have been using an iteration of sophiethepuffin's aspiration calculator (The Crumpulator from LordCrumps), which has made every aspiration type so much more interesting. Although I use it a lot, sometimes I like to just say, "you know what? This sim is gonna be this aspiration. Why? Because I said so." Sometimes you gotta take control to spice up the gameplay, and that's where this play style falls short.
I was kinda confused at first since you made some points (like ACR, how to choose aspirations, hobbies) that are not part of want-based gameplay but then I realized the video is more about Pleasant Sims gameplay style than just about the want-based rule I do agree that playing solely want-based is repetitive, The Sims 2 has multiple mechanics, and you cannot base your entire gameplay in just one. I personally love want based gameplay and I think its what works for me, you just have to choose which wants fit both the character you're playing and the story you want to play/tell with them, while also doing things out of what they roll I also don't like always having the same outcome, so i don't always make dina a gold digger, sometimes she evolves, and sometimes she doesn't, and so with every other sim About the inbreeding I think its a general Sims 2 problem you'll have with any type of rotational gameplay (unless you play uberhood); the aspirations I agree, i don't choose them that way; and hobbies I do have mods that reduce the frequency of the wants, I still make them focus on their hobby everyday, but the wants are sometimes annoying and dumb Overall, I think there's no gameplay style that should die and everyone should just play the way they enjoy their own game, while also not forcing their style into other players
I agree with most of your message. Yes, sometimes the characters should evolve, that's 100% true. Of course, everyone is free to play the way they want, but if such CONTENT (I was talking about simmers who share their gameplay) is watched from outside it really looks too similar and it's not really interesting to watch. Everyone plays the way they like, but why post the same stuff and force someone else's gameplay rules on yourself?
@@baddynaddy i totally agree with that! what most people need to understand is that the reason pleasant sims got such a big audience for a sims 2 channel was bc she introduced an entire new way to play the game to a bunch of simmers! it is sad that some want to push her rules into others, we need more simmers making up new play styles and rules
I play fears-based. Basically I only avoid my Sims’ fears as much as I can, unless I need them for storytelling purposes. Wants-based made me burn out on the game so much faster
I have always had a problem with following rules. So, while I have some rules in my game, I believe in being flexible about it. Inflexibility is the death of creativity. Which to me is the whole purpose of playing the Sims. Good vid.
I've played my own "custom" hood for almost 2 years (started as random sims i made and then i stablished a rotation), i never really liked the want based playstyle but i have a few rules and calculators to force myself to go out of my comfort zone. My most important rule is that if i get the feel of doing something, then just ignore what the rest of my rules say lol. My motto is that rules are important to not get bored but at the end of the day just do what you want and make stuff up. I've found that sims rarely are mean to eachother and become enemies, speciallu family members, so i have cheated the hell out of their relationship scores to get family drama, it has happened naturally when i've least expected it too. If i had gone full wants based there is no way i could be on rotation 22 without getting extremelly bored lol
15:08 The Secondary Aspiration Calculator is a nightmare to me. The people got so convinced that Cindy's calculations were so precise, but in reality, most of this calculations made the premades have an terrible mischaracterization.
Oh yes, in her letsplay she was also calculating the secondary aspirations pretty late in her sims lives (luckily she did acknowledge that later), which resulted in way too many secondary pleasure or romance sims.
Yes i never took her calculator as the “canon” result, but unfortunately some did. For example, John usually ends being a serial romantic with that calculator which is a HUGE mischaracterisation. There are many different calculators people should explore.
This!! I am now at the point where I will stop using that calculator because Sims always have super high culture and entertainment points and they are never interested in toys and animals, and also money and crime. Therefore my Sims all end up being secondary pleasure or popularity and never family or fortune. Now I know why 😢
I thought I was growing out of the sims 2 after playing wants based because the community said it was the right way to play so subconsciously I played this way but you really opened my eyes on this topic, definitely gonna think out of the box now, and you’re completely right about ACR, it gets very repetitive
I started playing a wants based style in my own hood, I hated it for a lot of reasons mostly in this video. I never used ACR or assigned aspirations based on personality. I always use dice rolls to decide them, because then whatever personality they have, the aspiration they get is what they get. A lazy fortune Sim? Good luck. A shy romance sim? Deal with it. I find it more fun than deciding based on something out of my control. I make woohoo risky by rolling 2 d6 dice, if I roll 10-12, it has to be a try for baby. I do this for every woohoo and I find I have a good balance of planned vs unplanned kids. I also tend to avoid woohoo unless they want to woohoo or want to have a kid (I don't roll in that case, I just let them try)
I fw this heavily! If I'm being honest, the wants/fears system is a very useful tool WHEN aiming for a playstyle based on min-maxxing each scenario of the game, because aspiration points allow you to access the Aspiration Rewards-an exclusive catalog of items that make some tasks easier, like the Thinking Cap or Pasteur's Smart Milk, but storywise? A wants-based gameplay destroys the fundamental pillar by which this game stands, and that is flexibility and chance. That's why BACC and Legacy Challenges are appealing to a lot of people, because they perfectly capture the magic of The Sims 2.
Your takes are brilliantly valid! I never understood limiting oneself to a certain set of overcomplicated rules when there are endless possibilities in how you can play the game. I'm surprised people are foolish enough to find joy in adopting the same play style on the same set of premades and expecting anything new or interesting to happen, like haven't you already watched 9 youtubers follow the same cookie cutter storyline?! This is why I play vibes-based, anything I do is on a whim and I only resort to listening to their wants if it's the absolute last resort; forget your aspiration points, I'm playing to satisfy myself! I have no weird system or calculator, any defining trait of my sims is decided by how I view their potential life trajectory - who says having 2 outgoing points can't make you a popularity sim? I remember making my new baby a knowledge sim because her mother gave birth in a thinking cap. My recent favourite way to play is a Minecraft x Rags to Riches x Legacy, where I plop a single sim down in the biggest empty lot and build an empire from there with little to no restrictions. This takes place in Bluewater Village of course as it's one of the less popular hoods, so you don't see people share their 10th "Florence x Malcolm" clone baby post of the day. The townies there are nice to pair up with too because you'd naturally be less familiar with them than the PV sims. I honestly don't watch any premade let's play regardless of the creator's personal play style, so I'd love to see you make a video on how you run your game! Love the OFB video from a while back btw x
I never took “wants” as a leading strict hand really, more like as a sign of who the Sim is and what they value. I am also a writer so I want some flexibility if I get an idea for a story path…but it is always a story path that can and will change with the right temptation at any moment and that could be a sim my sim is totally ignoring. And sometimes that temptation is linked to going WITH a want and sometimes the temptation is going AGAINST the want. I find it very easy to get stuck in a rut with Sims 2 due to the classic pairings and I needed to break it. Also sometimes I see a want and I am just like ‘nah, that’s not good for you. Lets go down this choice path instead’. Twas way more fun. But I would take wants as a motivation for next steps if I hit a wall in what I wanted to do next. Just like I do not like skill maxing every sim as I find that boring, I do not like maxing every career or every student being an A student, or only having the goal to make more simoleans (rags to riches), so I adjusted my play style and wants are more like guiding hands not hard fast rules. I know where I want my sims to get and sometimes that’s just middle class satisfaction. They don’t need the mansion. But some sims I play for the mansion and if that means ignoring them wanting a kid a few times until I think they are ready, that’s fine.
Despite playing mostly wants-based I can't relate to a lot of points because I've never liked PleasantSims rather strict gameplay rules (or the premades). I do assign main aspirations under consideration of personality points/hobbies, but storytelling has always been the more important factor. Also, as soon as I'll have to calculate anything manually I'm out lol I had to laugh at the untuned ACR section though, because being in some Sims 2 online spaces I've seen so many screenshots of people showing off their 10 Don Lothario children who all look the same despite having several different mothers. Guy really doesn't know what contraception is, does he? The reason I started playing mostly wants based is becuase I wanted my game to be harder. University especially was only an excuse for me to max some of my Sims skills, and I had a lot more Sims graduate with honors than necessary. Wants-based gameplay cut that down a lot while still not preventing my non-knowledge Sims from graduating. What personally bothers me about playing with my Sims wants in mind is how their aspiration will permanently stay pretty high unless a family member dies, which doesn't just prevent breakdowns but also unecessary cruelty (read: drama) It's kinda hard to cause drama in the game without cheating involved. You'll need to actively provoke it, especially when your Sims aspiration isn't red. I think that's a big part why I'm mostly playing historical gameplay now, since my Sims luxuries are so few that it becomes much harder to fulfill their wants and the constant tragedies make for good storylines. I don't get wanting to remove hobbies from the game either, since they tend to be a big part of mine. Although I do grind a bit too much for my Sims one true hobby. So many gym bros and virtuosos... I should really randomize them every now and then. In the end wants are just a part that feeds into the storyline I make up around my Sims anyways. One of my current favourites is a very shy and nerdy primary romance Sim who loves writing and the supernatural. He used to film a ghost hunting webshow with his sister and is now trying to make a quick buck in college by writing trashy fantasy romance, living vicariously though his characters instead of being out there finding love like he wants to. A good part of his story was caused by me trying (and failing) to fulfill his wants
People should play however they want to play because it's their playtime and it's their game. And if you don't want to play that way that's fine but why does it matter that they do? I usually do a mix like most wants based players. Most of us are not strictly playing to wants, but incorporate them. Sims 2 is around because a lot of people like playing the pre-mades.
i hope sims 2 letsplayers will start branching out because all the letsplays feel so similar. the only sims that have any drama are romance sims and the drama is always cheating. its one difference ive noticed with ts2 & ts4 drama-seeking gameplay- since the sims 4 doesn't have as good autonomy and there aren't any exciting premade stories, simmers actually get creative in telling their stories and often add some roleplaying that brings depth to a sometimes shallow game. oshinsims, for example, has a multiple season ts4 series where the inciting dramatic incident is an affair, but the story goes on to have a lot of emotion & drama about getting divorced when you have kids, loving a child that isn't biologically yours, half-sibling dymanics, dating as a single mother who has a career, the grief when your parent gets old and dies, and more. i wish sims 2 players would put effort into making their stories interesting instead of requiring the game to come up with all the plot for them.
THIS IS SO REAL! (also I love Lovesick, so good) This is not a compliment on TS4 at all (even if I still like the game), but the fact that it's so shallow really got people to be more creative, while in TS2 everything feels the same all the time bc everyone follows the same formula with the same pre-made sims (while in TS4 no one gives a fuck about the pre-mades lol). TS2 is the better game by a very long shot, but TS4 has the most creative community imo
It is!!! I’ve seen some gameplays of a youtuber that strictly (let’s say 90% of times) does her gameplay as wants-based. And I as a viewer get so bored after some episodes because it’s just the same stuff happening over and over again for all the families. But apparently a lot of wants-based players like their playstyle to be repetitive. So a lot of people who play like don’t get bored, I would like to know how
Thank you for believing in me! 💚 As for "blowing up", unfortunately, I cannot advertise on TH-cam because of political reasons. If only I could, I would have definitely promoted the Cassandra video and the one about business and maybe I would have had more subs by now. But I'm here for quality, not quantity 😉
Please please pleeeeease make a video talking about how you play and how you setup your acr too. I'm tired of play wants based only but I'm feeling a bit lost when it comes to creating my own storylines. I feel like I need some rules but not too much for me to play
I’ve always played “wants based” since I was a kid playing sims 3. I feel like these points aren’t really about want based gameplay but pleasantsims style gameplay, if that makes sense? I can understand the points about that style of LP. I can’t believe people remove hobbies from the game lol that’s… I don’t understand at all. Untuned acr is a menace but I like that it tries to preserve existing relationships. If a couple grows apart I’ll notice and decide what to do not acr.
I completely agree with you! For the most part I don't play wants-based and just go with the general vibes I get from the Sims I play, but sometimes I'll pay attention to them when I don't know what to do with my Sims, so I think it's a perfect balance. I also wanna add something: I do not understand many simmers' opinions of not playing with townies and even go round and download templates that get rid of them (I kinda "blame" this on Cindy, too"). Townies are what make neighborhoods more fun and alive and are also key in avoiding inbreeding and identical-looking sims
I think people mostly get rid of townies to make Uberhoods and custom hoods (and make sure they aren't overpopulated or there aren't any Goopy GilsCarbos on another planet), but I DO hate it when townies never age and their genetics is never used. Why does Alexander's grandson date Marissa Bendett all of a sudden when she'd used to be Don's lover 80 years ago?
Additionally, I do not blame ANYTHING on Cindy and I don't want anyone to think this way. Her play style and LP were unique and sort of revolutionary at the time, even if they hadn't been given much thought. I mostly got annoyed with those who copied from her.
Some of us don't want townies because we want our Sims we create to be townies. We want to play the entire neighborhood .. This isn't that weird. This is literally how the Sims started.
@@baddynaddySo you're mad at people for playing a game the way they want to play? Why? Cindy doesn't strictly play wants play either. Literally no one does. So how can you be mad at anyone for playing the game the way they want to play?
Because I would rather create my own townies that I can actually invest in. I'm sorry but I find all the premade sims boring asf and i really don't like the majority of the lore.
I adopted the wants-based play style because it helped me not to be such a control freak making all of my Sims succeed to my standards. I enjoy it but do my own thing ... I don't have ACR but use a no-jealousy mod so if there's no official commitment, I can have poly relationships. For example in my PV Nina and Don are together but they have open relationships, they have 2 kids and only 1 of them is Don's. I also use my own system for zodiac sign-aspiration, based on my interpretation of astrology-personality. For example Aries are pleasure and romance and I determine which will be main and which will be secondary for that particular sim.
this is the reason why i stopped playing sims 2 for a good while and got burnt out of it, despite me liking the way sims 2 does personality and little details around them ive always felt like sims 3 tried to make the sims more unique and differents in a more convincing way. the wishes are more improved and situational depending on what your character is doing alongside taking the traits and ltw systems into account. sims 2 on the other hand is limited by the aspiration type and its 50 personality of which in cas you can only use 25 to define the character.
I totally agree with you. Additionally, the necessity to use all the 25 personality points in CAS has always been killing me too. What if I want to create a misanthrope grandpa who's been living off his wife all his life but he still enjoys lecturing his children and grandchildren about life? I want him to be sloppy, shy, lazy, serious and grouchy at the same time, but I will never be able to create him this way without cheats. I can't ever create my own self in the Sims 2 CAS, because I only use around 20 personality points.
Hi Nadia! I've been watching your PV series since the beginning and have been loving it! While I don't agree with all the choices you make for the sims in your game, it does make me think about the overall storyline and what direction you may be taking it that differs from the way I would play those sims. I really dislike wants-based gameplay too, and I think thats the reason why I deleted all of the pre-made neighbourhoods. When playing those neighbourhoods, I felt pressured to play them like everyone else because it was "lore accurate" even though I'm playing the game in my own company and not sharing it with anyone. Now I only play custom and themed neighbourhoods (currently a twilight inspired hood and also a medieval hood), which forces me to use my imagination. I often take inspiration from books, movies, tv shows, etc... to add variety and spice up the neighbourhoods if the story gets stale. Keep doing what you're doing! Looking forward to your next Reasoned PV episode!
You can find real gems among the custom hoods pretty often, that's true. And taking inspiration from books or TV shows is something that I do as well. Thank you for watching my LP! 🧡💛🤎
I play a loose wants based playstyle - letting my sims choose what jobs they want, what skills to raise, if they go to university or not (which i really enjoy because it stops all my sims from going to university or doing all 4 years). But as for aspirations, I assign aspirations based on the sim themself (or based on the story I want for them). As for inbreeding, I have no issue with creating sims from CAS and giving them a backstory and plopping them into my neighbourhood. I did this recently in my 50 year town where I realized I had no teenage girl sims (for some of my male sims to begin relationships with) so I created two families and gave each of them teen daughter sims and created a story for them (made them hate each other to create some more drama). I have noticed that family sims and fortune sims get very repetitive with their gameplay. Family sims love to play chess or play video games while my fortune sims love to spend all their money!
I agree with this! I've always been a Storyteller by nature as I am an artist and thus love to draw. For Sims 2 I always loved Wants and Fears and definitely take them into account, same for ACR, but I don't want them to dictate my playstyle. If I think a Sim would be more interesting with someone else I will force that to happen for the sake of storytelling, regardless of what my Sims want. I have a certain set of pairings I really LOVE and therefore I won't as easily stray from them for example. Despite this, I've had people tell me that they didn't understand why I forced certain pairings or events to happen, despite the fact they also often told me they enjoyed my storytelling and wished they could play more like that. Which sounds very confusing and contradicting! I don't always want my Sims to decide who they end up with, sometimes I have a story planned and the other option is way too boring as a result to me. 🙃 On top of that to avoid inbreeding (which still happens) I expand my neighborhoods. I don't like Uberhoods between the main 3 hoods because it doesn't make sense to me. But I LOVE adding the less popular hoods to them. My Veronaville has the Tricou's added into the mix, at the same time Desiderata and Riverblossom Hills got a make over to reflect Veronaville's theater style and picked sides. This way my Sims have more choices, but it fits into the main Veronaville storyline. And for my Strangetown I often add Sims from the spinoff games. This takes a lot of time to set up. But I'm always very happy with the outcome, because they're canon to Strangetown but it also adds like 10-20 more families to the hood.
I also don't like the three main hoods together. Especially with the fact that Veronaville and its university are Europe-inspired, unlike Pleasantview and Strangetown. I also want to play Veronaville and Strangetown and add custom sub-hoods to them, I also want to work on my custom hood which I have almost everything planned for, I just don't have enough time for all that 😭😭😭
@@baddynaddy YES! I'm glad I'm not the only one! The main 3 hoods are so unique for different reasons and combining them together just destroys the fun and believability for me. I get how it can take some time to set up haha! It's why I kinda plan to make a basehood for my Strangetown so I do not constantly have to set it up myself (I play with PSP, GBA and DS Strangetown added into the mix). Custom hoods, I always end up abandoning sadly due to my loss of focus and lack of premades. :'D I plan on posting some videos about my hoods eventually (thankfully backed these up), I just gotta clean up my CC first after I had to reinstall my game due to corruption. :') Do you have any other places you share your hoods (like Discord, Tumblr, etc)?
I only have one custom hood, sadly. And it's not really properly done, I made it for my 100 baby challenge (which I gave up on 2 years ago). Additionally, it's in russian, so there's no point in sharing it. But I think I'll show it when I'll talk about my gameplay rules. I don't have any "simmerish" social media either, I got a Reddit account this spring but they banned me the very first day. Still have no idea what I did wrong, just wrote one post on my own page and a couple of comments in The Sims 2 sub-reddit (and they got hidden immediately after I posted them, so none could see them but myself).
@@baddynaddy Ahhh that's understandable yeah! I've never done a 100 babies challenge myself. Currently playing a Grunt LEPacy challenge and that's the closest I've gotten to playing on a single family for a long period of time haha. I usually do like playing in rounds nowadays, even though I did play whoever I wanted to for ages (that's how my Old Strangetown is super out of sync from an aging perspective haha). That's wild? I wonder what happened there because that's such a weird thing to happen. I'm sorry to hear that.
As a writer I also like making my own familes and mixing them with the townies and pre-mades. So I will rotate the main families and also make like three or four with mix and match ages of kids. Sometimes they are inspired by TV shows I like (I made an adult Dexter from the Dexter’s lab cartoon and his sister Dee Dee for example) and sometimes I reinvent characters from my own stories and drop them in. And sometimes I just will be like ‘this neighborhood needs a queer couple with two sons” and so I just make that and mix them into the town. Its nice when Lilth and Angela have options that aren’t just Dustin and Darren. Also widens the gene pool.
Another thing I’d like to add is that the want treas are broken in some places, and many Sims players aren’t aware of that. Most notably, the ”break up with spouse” want is coded wrong, so even though it technically exists, Sims can’t roll it unless you modify the game files. I’ve seen so many people keep Daniel and Mary Sue together even after she caught him cheating, because they didn’t roll the want to break up. Edit: Just to clarify, I don’t think it’s wrong to keep the Pleasants together, for example, if you want. But I do think it’s sad when players say that they wanted to break them up, but didn’t do it because ”they wanted to stay together”.
I seldom ever comment on videos (it gives me major anxiety for some reason), but I just wanted to say that this video is brilliant. You went into a lot of the issues I started to notice with Wants based play, mainly in terms of the tunable Wants (resulting in repetition), and aspirations based around zodiac signs. I have a loosely Wants based style, meaning I focus on story mainly and only factor in Wants if I 1) don't have an idea for where a particular sim's story should go, and 2) where skilling is concerned, but if I have an idea of what skills I want sims to have or where I wish for them to go career wise, that trumps Wants 100%. For example, in my current Strangetown, Tank Grunt is working towards becoming a General regardless of his Wants, because that's where I want his story to go. He's going through a character arc which wouldn't be possible if I just stuck to his Wants, instead he'd be working in politics and partying everyday. If you're limiting yourself to Wants, your story can't really go anywhere interesting beyond adultery and illegitimate children. It even makes basic features like moving out, or even getting married impossible because the sims don't roll Wants for it. There was a post I came across a while ago where a player wanted a couple to get married because that was where they wanted the story to go, BUT these sims weren't rolling the Wants for it so they "couldn't." They were asking how they could force the Wants to appear and a lot of the comments were, "if you want to do it, just do it," but they were insistent on playing Wants based. I have a lot of interesting storylines going on in my current Strangetown; Tank Grunt getting close to becoming General but getting cold feet; Tank's sons mostly being raised by General Buzz due to Tank being busy, and because of that they're cold-hearted and are set to cause destruction once they're older (the eldest was born extremely grouchy, which birthed this storyline), Loki Beaker has just created a mystery virus and has started spreading it across Strangetown by infecting his daughter's boyfriend, Tycho Curious is set to go down a dark path with good intentions, and it just keeps going. None of this would be possible if I stuck to Wants exclusively. I'm unsure if I made any semblance of sense with my rambling, but the point is this video was a treat to watch. I was also nodding all the way through you talking about Pleasantview's clichés, and I also headcanon Nina as a hopeless romantic (I headcanon Ripp Grunt as such too; he's too nice to be a heartbreaker in my opinion).
@NoIdleSims I use Epi's Improved Biotech Station to allow sims to create medicines and even viruses that other sims can actually consume. The two viruses that can be made are moderate (can be either food poisoning, a cold, or the flu), and strong (the mysterious disease). The mysterious disease is a vanilla game disease, but usually, only the sim making it can be the original carrier. With the Improved Biotech Station, sims can actually drink it. It can be fatal and is very contagious, which can result in an outbreak, so I think it's on brand for Loki Beaker to do something like this. The "virus arc," so to speak, is still in its early stages, so only Tommy Ottomas is infected at the moment. The hope is that he begins spreading it, resulting in an outbreak. The purpose is to add some intrigue and stakes for a little bit. It also gives the Curious descendents something to do 😆
i generally end up ignoring a lot of wants even tho i call myself a wants-based player lol since nobody ever gets EVERYTHING they want and frankly the sims are dumb as hell!! one of my fave families is the newson family and they're like the definition of a family that needs to sacrifice wants for NEEDS lol i'll sometimes let gavin get a part time job and ginger stay home more often but i dont really like the idea of the oldest girl being the one that cares for the babies since she's still ALSO a kid so more often than not i'll force her to try to work and graduate while gavin does his part to cook and help the younger ones anyways. fortune sims also end up just typically being the primary ones who get rich and work hard which i dont think should be the case all the time lol like wanting to get rich doesnt mean you will but if you play wants only they'll very likely all end up very successful lol or with family sims and them all constantly just wanting more and more babies, i ignore that a lot 99% of the time but for some sims like brandi i read her as a sim that just ends up with a lot of kids so i let her adopt more. I usually base the secondary aspirations on vibes because there is absolutely no circumstance in which cass is anything but knowledge in my eyes. but I usually make don marry cass and I just play with him for a while and if i feel like he's "settled down" in my story i'll give him secondary family lol. In one playthrough cass died in childbirth and he saved her from grim so i felt that was pretty substantial enough for me to let him be a family man xD
(Note: this got way longer than I anticipated but this video really inspired me to share some thoughts) This was an interesting video! When I clicked I wasn't sure what to expect because I kind of like wants-based playstyles but you ended up saying so many things I agree with. I don't follow sims 2 let's plays as much as I used to, so I had no idea how wide-spread Pleasant Sims' inspired playstyle became but I definetely agree that the fact that so many people adopted Pleasant Sims' playstyle as some sort of a Bible gets annoying. Especially since to me the whole point of let's plays is to see different people's outcomes and decisions. But I would honestly say it's more about the problem of adopting the "Pleasant Sims playstyle" rather than about "wants-based playstyle" or rather the problem of the fact that "wants-based playstyle" became synonymous with "Pleasant Sims Playstyle". A lot of your points are really about stuff that has nothing to do with wants - you can decide to mostly focus on following the wants but not go with the zodiac-sign-based aspirations, secondary aspiration calculator or no ACR/better tuned ACR settings. But I get that the main point is about the play-style most people are referring to when they say they are "wants based". I was similar to you when I discovered PleasantSims actually. Since I was the one who always made all my sims maximize their skills and stuff like that, Pleasant Sims' videos intrigued me as something completely different from what I was doing. That's why it's sad to hear that so many people took what felt original with her and made and turned it into the repetitive/everyone is doing it thing. Too many people saw her as inspiration that what originally felt like a breath of fresh air turned into the next repetitive thing. In my case, her let's plays were inspiration to try new things in my game and I may have got an idea from her here and there as I did become more wants-focused too but never a 100% and there but there was a large amount of stuff she did that I knew I would never like to see in my own gameplay. To me wants-based was some sort of a guideline but I always liked to do things I thought would make sense even if the sims in question didn't roll such wants or ignored the wants I though didn't fit the sim. With Peter Ottomas, for example, I tend to ignore his rare wants to woohoo/make out with multiple sims, at least until Samantha is still alive, because he is such a rare example of a romance sim that you can keep happy without making him have multiple partners, I really see him as someone who loves being romantic with the one partner he is with. And when Samantha usually dies a little bit before him and he suddenly wants a lot of lovers I interpret it as him trying to fill in the hole but no one actually comes close to his one true soulmate. And can I just say hard agree about zodiac based aspirations and secondary aspiration calculator? I never liked this system, why should all sims of the same zodiac sign be the same? I personally tend to choose my aspiration based on so many different things - sometimes the child or in some cases even toddler sims roll wants that make me decide what aspiration they could be leaning to. For example, when one of my child sim roled a want for a new family member to join the family (I think that was the only time I saw that want in my game) I interepreted it as her wanting a sister and it was a reason for me to give her a family aspiration when she grew up. Or once, right after I newly installed Season into my game, Sharla Ottomas came home from school with pretty much every child sim in the neighbourhood so that was a sign to me that she is a popularity sim. Yet in another neighborhood, Sharla rolled so much wants to get skill points I made her a knowledge sim. I love giving the same sim different aspirations in different versions of the hoods - it keeps it really refreshing. Similarly with secondary aspirations - sometimes my sims roll a lot of wants not directly related to their aspirations and I take it as a sign of the secondary. Other times I just add an additional dimension that would fit them and there was even a situation I only gave secondary family to a sim so someone could make Grandma's comfort soup because the cycle of never-ending sickness in that family was driving me crazy. My point is I like trying new things with aspirations and secondary aspirations and it makes sims feel much more interesting. Your let's plays sound like a lot of fun and it's sad to see that people took the "Pleasant Sims' want-based rules" so literally that they actually tell you you are playing incorrectly when the whole point of sims is that you can do whatever you want and that there are so many different possible outcomes. I'm definetely checking more of your videos out at some point because I'm always down to see something different!
Thank you for your comment! I've never really played much with the premades, but giving them different aspirations and couples in different neighborhoods is an absolute must if you don't want to repeat your own playing style. For example, I paired Kaylynn Langerak up with Chester Geike from Bluewater Village in my Reasoned Pleasantview, but one of the viewers shared how they'd seen her end up with Darren Dreamer. This made a lot of sense to me, so if I ever decide to restart my Pleasantview, I would probably go that direction.
@@baddynaddyNice! Both of these sound like very fun pairings that I've never heard of before. Kaylynn honeslty deserves so much better than Daniel or Don so it's great to hear about stories where she is happy with other Sims. This comment reminded me that I still haven't done much with her in the current Pleasantview save so I guess that's another thing to figure out what to do with in that game. My most random recent pairing was in Fairplay (genderbent Pleasantview) where the male version of Cassandra just broke up with the female version of Don and randomly met a townie that asked her if she was interested in a blind date. Since he wanted to fall in love anyway I figured why not and the person ended up being Dora Ottomas.
I completely agree with all of your points! I think one thing I find irritating is how the wants based players go about sending their sins to college. Teens will have to rerolled the want when the get closer to age up for them to send them, and then most of them fail out for not rolling wants to gain skill points/do assignments. I prefer to have a mix of successful uni sims, some who skate by, and a few failures, that feels more realistic to me than the majority flunking out. Variety is the spice of life. I hope you keep making content like this! This video made me feel better about my decision to never use calculators or use personality based aspirations despite it being 'the cool thing to do'
12:40 iirc Gemini and Sagittarius were originally assigned to the Power aspiration before it was scrapped and replaced with the Grow Up aspiration, as seen with some of the Veronaville ancestors.
I agree so much!!! Sims 2 premade have unique storylines that are far more interesting than any other premades from the other games of the franchise. If you only play wants-based all of your sims will end up doing the same thing, it’s sooo boring. I do agree that everybody can play the way they want, but I do think (respectfully) that want-based players are lazy and don’t have the ability to play gameplay or storytelling wise.
“This video won’t get popular” you know what, you just gained me as a subscriber. I fully agree with with this. Wants-based gameplay sounds revolutionary at first but it does get extremely boring and repetitive and it completely ruined my gameplays over time. A suggestion would to make a video sharing gameplay tips to make the gameplay less predictable and alive. Like a “recovering from wants-based gameplay” or something lol
You don't have to recover from wants based play. That's also kind of a messed up joke considering real addiction is very very difficult to deal with. Most wants based players simply incorporate wants as they desire with autonomy. I do it in the Sims 4 all the time. I allow whims sometimes to change the direction of their lives, but it's not the only factor I use. It's literally no one's only factor. Only people who take this super strict were ever playing that way. Even the person who played that way originally doesn't play that way 😂
@@Fizzypopization it wasn’t a joke about addiction, it was about an “illness” that plagued many people’s gameplays. One can recover from diseases too, you know.
Love this video! Personally, even though I enjoyed Pleasant Sims let's plays, her rules always seemed to strict for me in the way that make game very schematic and repetitive - especially since there are so few aspirations in the Sims 2 (secondary aspiration is mandatory for everyone in my game! :D) and the wants are very predictive. I pay attention to my sims wants, but I treat them more like suggestions/inspirations than something I have to follow. Also, I sometimes avoid fulfilling some wants (including lifetime wants) on purpose, to create some drama for sake of storytelling :D. I used to assign aspirations basing on personality points (similarly to Marticore) and even though I think this system is much better than using just zodiac signs, after a while it also started to feel too repetitive for me and I totally gave it up. Right now I either choose aspiration myself or randomize it (randomizing stuff in general is recently my preferred way to add some diversity and chaos to my game :D). Also - I pay A LOT attention to my sims hobbies and I also don't get why people install mod to block hobby wants (I never felt those roll too often, but maybe it's because I never did a strict wants-based gameplay). Actually, I have some sims (mostly pleasure ones, but that's not a rule) who don't even have regular job and make money only on stuff related to their one true hobby (winning dance/cooking competitions, selling their crafts/produce etc.) - and those are often my favorite sims to play!
I will say that at first I did play wants based because it was how I was introduced to the game. I especially liked it though because I would tend to be a perfectionist otherwise. For example in the sims 3 (my first sims game) all my sims would be perfect A students and would be excellent employees. Always went to school, always did their homework, always went to work and always reached the top of their career. And even though it got repetitive to a degree (outside of my personal story telling) it always felt wrong to me to make them fail. So when I started playing the sims 2 having sims not want to be perfect was my favorite thing and led me to allow them to be failures lol. Nowadays I still enjoy wants but I do take more into account other aspects of their life like their hobbies (I always try to pick an extra hobby for them to enjoy as well!), their interests and second aspirations and I randomize everything else (no more calculators for me). And if I have a specific story for them I’ll prioritize that instead. For example I plan to have Alexander’s first child take over as head of the family and that means he’ll have to be a “perfect” sim (go figure) according to family pressure regardless of his wants. And sometimes I’m also inspired by the wants as well! For example I had a sim that was cheated on during high school but she kept on rolling the want to fall back in love with him regardless of how many times it ever worked out! So I took that as if she was obsessed with him and would make him hers no matter what it took even as an adult lol. Overall I think people should play however they want to as I’m sure many would agree! If people want to make all their sims the same then go for it! Or if they want to play according to their own wills then go for that as well! So long as we are having fun that’s all that matters in the end. I’ll never get tired of hearing about other players sims games regardless of how they play, I just love hearing how much fun that are having!
not all wants based players play in pleasantsims style! i play wants based (and fears based) while also looking at the characters personalities. i've had 2 strangeview megahoods (one with belladonna cove added and the other with 4t2 conversions of sims 4 townies) and the experience has been wildly different each time. first time around don left cassandra at the altar but then decided to move in with nina and raise their 3 kids together in a mostly monogamish relationship. lilith ran away from home bc mary sue and daniel were beating the snot out of each other before divorcing. angela moved to university and dumped dustin and developed a harem. dustin turned his life around, became a cop, and even took in two of his siblings (beau and unborn baby broke) bc brandi kept popping out kids with lazlo curious and moved to strangetown with him. ophelia left johnny for ripp and they autonomously got engaged. wants based allows for storytelling bc the sims have that much character to them!
What you're describing here isn't really wants-based anymore, because wants to move in with someone don't exist, for example, which means you were consciously inventing your stories yourself (and good for you!). BTW, I also think Dustin is a way better "parent" for his siblings than Brandi. 😉
I always ignore the zodiac my sim is when giving them an aspiration. I just spin a wheel, you get unique sims that way. I do play with secondary aspirations too but it is also random so that I don't keep getting the same combo. I did this because I was bored with the "what aspiration each sim is supposed to have" rhetoric. Sometimes it's character based, like I always give Alexander the fortune aspiration and Lucy the family one. I don't pair them up though, since I make a Cecelia for Alexander. I also do a lot of founders playthroughs because I like playing through their story with the genetics corrected. For the sims 4 I just like making family trees, and I do a more traits based gameplay, which new sims are always randomized. The Goth family I have in a founders save is like 6 generations long to get to the starting place in the game. It's really fun.
This is such a needed video!! I was definitely influenced by this play style and rules in general, and it becomes really repetitive because there are so many activities in the game that are not accounted for in the wants system. The Sims are all happy all the time because of the fulfilled wants, in real life we don't always get to do what we want right? Aspirations being tied to zodiac signs is a neat system for randomly generated townies, but not for playable Sims. It's a bit silly to me to determine their whole life right at birth based on this 🤔 The families also become identical, nuclear mess with lots of children. I love unconventional families like the ones in Strangetown - aunt and niece, three brothers living together, mad scientists couple and their test subject, there's so much potential here! I don't see some Sims getting married or having children at all. I am also somewhat of a storyteller and I think you shouldn't feel bad about forcing your will on the sims regarding what they do and who they end up with, or it seems more like the game is playing YOU at this point and not the other way around hahaha I usually look at the bio (if it's a premade), personality, interests and in-game behavior to create a storyline in my head I will enjoy following! I have my own downsides though because I am sort of a control freak and I don't like unpredictable events that go out of character for my Sim 😅 That's why I don't like ACR all that much bc everyone just starts cheating left and right omg Anyways I'd definitely love to see more content like this!
I 100% agree. While I do take wants in consideration sometimes, I mostly do it when I have no plan on what to do OR intended to do what the want suggests anyway (like having a baby etc.). Something that helps me with playing different stories is to play expansion focused (I also do this in ts3 and ts4). What I mean by that is that I look at features and mechanics I never tried before and seem interesting and try them with sims with which I think fit hem. For example I never rly tried opening an own restaurant and I have a sim that was always cooking for her family as a teen and has Culinary as the one hobby so I will try this feature with her. What happens on the way there or if the sim succeeds is open and up to my own interest to continue the story. Even a failure can be interesting and be inspiring for the storylines of the children and their goals. Sometimes I also throw in an online random occurrence generator and inspire myself on what to do. I think that playing wantsbased just like you said can water down the stories and lore of sims and makes them a shell of their aspirations as the wants will never rly reflect all the features and possibilities the game actually offers.
There's a mod that makes it so that Sims with the Hopeless Romantic Trait (from another mod, the 3t2 Traits Project) who have the Romance Aspiration won't roll wants about cheating- i really hope we can get more mods like that in the future to distinguish different flavors of the same aspiration. It would make wants-based game play wayyyyy better
What a thorough, insightful way to explain exactly how I felt playing wants based . Sometimes , I’ll do a wholesome family play through with no drama , then sometimes I play for the drama 🎭. I like chaotic gameplay at times , and that play style is too stifling and rigid . It is a game after all I don’t need rules . By the way I love your veil you pull it off well .
Thank you 😊 There are so many kinds of families and people around us: some of them are about constant fights and drama, others are quiet and don't want any drama in their lives at all (like the Dreamers, who are often called "boring" because of that). I believe it should be the same way in the game. V - variety. P.S. the veil is actually a see-through skirt🤣
I’ve gotten back into playing Sims 2 and honestly I don’t take zodiac into account with Aspiration choosing. Heck sometimes I don’t even look at their personality! I look at each individual Sim and which Aspiration seems most “in-character” for that specific Sim to me. I tried the zodiac system before and it got really repetitive so I prefer the way I pick Aspirations now. I don’t really play wants-based either. Again, I feel like it gets repetitive. I don’t want every single Romance Sim to have like 30 lovers or every Family Sim to have five kids… I definitely like having variety instead, Oh and I completely agree with your thoughts on ACR! I always turn Autonomy completely off and Risky Woohoo to 0 percent if I use that mod. I mostly keep it in my game to program jealousy per Sim. That’s literally it. I do like playing premade hoods, but I try to change up storylines when I restart them. I feel like Sims 2 has such potential to produce diverse and fun Sims but when people have rules like this, they get super predictable and too similar. I don’t mind if people play how they want (“rules” and all), just when they try to push it onto me and how I play the game Enjoyed the video! Glad this showed up on my recommended :)
I've tried playing wants based before, but I can never stick to it. It gets boring so quickly, doing basically the same thing over and over. I have a lot more fun in any of the sims games if I just get a random idea, and do it even if I have to cheat for it.
I like the structure of playing Wants Based, but I also am not like forcing myself to ONLY do what my sim wants. Most of my sims always end up married with kids xD but I like Family play BUT that said, I play with a few rules: 1) I only lock one want slot per day. So like Monday it would be the first slot for all the sims in a household. Those are the only wants that are rolled that I can complete. If it gets completed, I lock the next one in that slot. So sometimes, I'll have engaged sims on a Wednesday but the "get married" want is not on the 3rd slot, so they don't get married until that want pops up with the day they are on. I've had it work out where people ended up cheating on each other before their wedding days and just generally making some light chaos! 2) I use the secondary aspiration calculator to calculate both primary and secondary aspirations when my sims are toddlers. I never liked the assigning based on aspiration sign because, as a Libra, I'm not romantic at all xD This way, the interests are not likely skewed yet since they JUST aged up to a toddler. I know you can't select them until they are teens, but it makes me feel more like "this is what this sim is born to do" I don't mind some repetitive gameplay (I'm also really into farming sims and they are almost the same thing day in and out xD) but these small changes give me enough to feel like my sims are unique and also make bad desicions. Like college kids not rolling the want to do their homework, so they end up on academic probation.
I only recently found out that some people follow a very strict way of having personality determine aspiration and was surprised. I always randomize aspirations when sims grow into teens and it results in some fun and unexpected combinations. You can have a shy popularity sim who struggles with social interaction but nonetheless craves external validation. Or an outgoing, playful knowledge sim who works in the showbiz career and is dedicated to perfecting their craft. I know a lot of the aspiration-based wants seem to try to railroad sims into certain stereotypes but there's still plenty of wiggle room, especially once you add secondary aspirations (which I decide for myself but do it more based on vibes than any rigid system).
Hey, I just wanted to share my thoughts on the wants-based play style in The Sims 2. While I know it's a popular approach, I personally feel it limits creativity and storytelling after a while. I once used Pleasant Sims' Excel template, and although I started with that structure, I ended up creating my own way of playing, which I enjoy much more. Your content has been a huge influence on me, and I really love what you create! Keep it up! 😍💫
I definitely agree with this vid, this could explain why I don't tune into sims 2 let's plays anymore. I don't play the premade hoods as much, but I have noticed in my custom hood that following wants has led to boring gameplay and I ignore wants sometimes. In my experience, hobby wants do get repetitive and annoying as a result, but I do like to nurture hobbies. I do like that there are premade rules and calculators I can use so I don't have to think much about what to do or what to choose, but I understand that it does lead to more or less the same result. I am interested to see how you play your game, maybe I'll implement into my game! Also loved your outfit
I'll make a video on my play style in about 10 more videos. Thank you for the compliment! These are ones of the very few black items in my wardrobe, I'm even wearing a skirt on my head as a veil 😅
I do a mixture of gameplay. I have certain characters that I have created and there are certain things I want to happen for storytelling, but I also add a mix of want-based playing. I tend to save a “major” want and work towards that, with a mixture of of my storytelling elements
Did you know that wants-based play started with the original Legacy Challenge. Before that, nobody really bothered. But Legacy play encouraged you to keep a tally of your sims' lifetime happiness, and grinding wants gained popularity. It is now an entrenched play style, but it wasn't always. I'm stunned that it has had the longevity it's had.
No, I didn't know that. I got on TH-cam only in 2015, I also never had any real The Sims 2 enthusiasts around me, so I was pretty much isolated from the community and learnt about the Legacy Challenge from The Sims 3 players. It's a very curious piece of history that you're talking about.🧐
I've been playing since 2006 and I follow the saying that rules are there for the breaking. Also I'm a lazy bitch, so no spreadsheets for me. I have adapted to rotational game play but otherwise my game is pretty much the wild west compared to what I see and read online. I do fulfill wishes if I feel like it, they are interesting or they fit the story I had in mind. Just do what feels right in the moment and don't cling to strict rules. Btw my Brandi abandoned her kids by Skip and married Buzz Grunt to live the perfect housewife life with him.
Great video! I'd never considered some of these points, but you convinced me. Here I was wishing there were more aspirations to chose from, so I don't have the same 7 sims all the time (or 5 that I would actually chose, because pleasure and grilled cheese are the worst, precisely because they make you a slave to that wants panel!). You've put a lot of thought into this and I would love to hear you explain your alternative play style in another video. Subscribed!
I’d love to see more about your play style! I feel like pretty much everyone uses wants based (including myself) and I’d love to learn more about different ways to play the game!
I've really liked your video! Even if I sometimes play wants based I don't do it all the time, I can force my sims to do things to direct their stories if I have something in mind prepared for them. I find it more fun! I admit I follow certain cliches, as with some romantic pairings with premades, but I try to diversify more with their descendants. For example in Veronaville I tend to add some extra families to mingle with some of the premades. Keep up the nice videos coming and thank you for breaking certain stupid "rules" certain simmers had made (they should never had been rules in the first place, only suggestions...)
I’m a wants based player for decades and you literally just answered my biggest question as to why do i keep getting bored with Sims 2 & 3, i did even bought Sims 4 and IMMEDIATELY got bored in 2 hours. I’ll try not to get lazy to create something and not being so perfectionist with my sims.
I agree with these points! I sometimes use the wants to direct my play if I don't know what to do, but I focus more on that character's story than anything. I really love the hobby system because it makes sims much more interesting. I like to try to match hobbies to sims based on their descriptions (i.e., pottery for mary-sue, gardening for john burb), but I like seeing what they come up with for their one hobby. As for assigning aspirations, sometimes I don't really have an idea for the kids when they grow up, so I will use the zodiac assignment as a jumping-off point so my town doesn't get too flooded with one aspiration type. However, if I do have an idea in mind, I try to assign them based on that character's background. For example, I usually make Alexander a fortune/knowledge sim, since he has a hidden fortune token. I also like the idea of him being kind of a spoiled brat who got doted on because of Bella's disappearance, so I kind of play him that way. I definitely prefer pairing up sims randomly when I can. Sometimes I'll pair up Cass/Darren, other times Brandi/Darren--it depends on how i'm feeling on that particular go-around. this time, a blind date put malcolm landgraab and jodie larson together, which i think is interesting--usually I put Dina with him after mortimer dies. I think that wants-based has some ideas to offer for those who are kind of lost, but I think it's more fun to figure out the depth of a given sim by exploring the whole picture, versus sticking to a rigid set of rules. Also, I am learning quickly I really need to tune ACR. Trisha and Trent were popping out babies like crazy. so much for their dream of traveling when all their money is spent on diapers.
I totally agree with LPs being the latin language on TH-cam. But I still love this language, let's put it this way ☺️ Thank you for all the compliments. I'm from Russia (remember the not being able to promote my videos on TH-cam comment under the Cassandra video?). Maybe that's why I pronounced your name correctly? They say Russians are good at languages 😉
@@baddynaddy а я знала, я знала , что ты из России, привет, землячка и подруга по хобби! Я оставляла несколько комментариев на английском под разными видео, например, про мод No baby harrasment. Пересматриваю твой Reasoned Pleasantview сейчас, во время обострения болезни. Твои видео помогают мне засыпать ❤ Но, поскольку я слежу за сюжетом, на следующий день приходится находить момент, на котором я заснула =)
Рыбак рыбака видит (в данном случае слышит) издалека 😄 Я рада, что мы "встретились".😊 Конечно, были у меня знакомые, которые играли в симс, но они не фанатели от игры, как я (даже симов в бассейне ни разу не топили!!!). Засыпаешь под мои видео - это хорошо. А то я недавно на Reddit нашла пост, которым мой подписчик пытался меня продвинуть, а кто-то в комментариях мало того, что разнёс вот это моё видео (вполне возможно, что и справедливо), так ещё и сказал, что у него "уши заболели" от моего "визглявого голоса". Вот, а теперь оказывается, что люди под меня засыпают, значит "всё не так уж плохо на сегодняшний день". Вообще, на русском у меня голос пониже (и словарный запас побольше, лол), странно, что некоторые не понимают, что голос меняется от волнения. Поправляйся! Октябрь - не время для болезней, рано ещё.
@@baddynaddy Продолжу на русском, раз уж у нас тут образовался русскоязычный уголок =) Твой голос приятный, а главное, ты не орёшь, что очень важно для человека, пытающегося заснуть (OMG!!! IT'S TWIIIINS!). Болею я, к сожалению, очень давно, и при этом вынуждена работать полный день, поэтому играть в любимых Симс силы есть не очень часто. В такие времена спасают летсплеи, и я рада, что появился твой канал. Он действительно отличается от большинства каналов с летсплеями по двойке (ещё я люблю Marticore и Ani Bats, опять же за то, что они в своей фишке). Процитирую то, что писала в чате друзей, где мы обсуждаем Симс (правда, кроме меня, никто из них больше не играет в двойку): "Сейчас мне очень нравится серия Reasoned Pleasantview, где девушка играет, рассуждая о психологии персонажей (исходя из их био, характеров и контекста) и логике событий. Сколько я этих летсплеев по Плезантвью пересмотрела, и у всех, блин, Мортимер после женитьбы переезжает в кондо к Дине, оставляя дом Кассандре и Дону. Ну где, блин, логика? Дина не для того замуж за Мортика выходила, чтобы он свой старый зад к ней в дом перетащил, и жили они поживали на его смехотворную пенсию." По теме видео и о том, как играю я. Во-первых, я люблю таблицы, сейчас использую электронные, а раньше вела тетради, так было всегда, с самого начала. Что сказать, я просто дата фрик и получаю от ведения учёта удовольствие. К тому же я заношу в таблицы мои мысли о персонажах, их будущем развитии, возможных сюжетах, какие-то важные мелочи, например "вместе с Брэдом играет в группе "Железная дорога", сделать маникюр, когда будет съезжать к мужу - забрать собаку". Поскольку у меня бывают очень большие перерывы в игре, эти таблицы помогают мне не терять нить. Во-вторых, опять же, сколько себя помню, я играла исключительно ротационно. Давно уже пришла к удобной для себя системе: неделя делится на 3 круга (первый - это пн и вт, второй - ср и чт, третий - пт, сб, вс). Таким образом за одну неделю я играю всеми семьями по 3 раза по очереди (надеюсь, понятно объяснила). Никогда не играю премэйдами, всегда создаю свои городки и своих персонажей. ACR нормально настроила не сразу, так что городок немного распух (сейчас в нём 20 семей, играю с 2021 года). Но теперь слежу за плодячкой построже). Стремления не делю на первое и второе - оба одинаково важны для меня в характеристике личности. Желания исполняю как раз исходя из сочетания стремлений. Например, сим со стремлениями к семье и романтике одновременно, может, и изменит благоверному разок или другой, но для этого нужны особые обстоятельства. А вот если сим одновременно романтик и удовольственник, то "все тяжкие" гарантированы =) Хобби люблю и придаю им много значения. МВЖ выбираю вручную исходя из стремлений, хобби и интересов. Первое стремление выбираю по системе Мартикор, о котором она упомянала в одном из своих видео. Для выбора второго я сделала собственный калькулятор, где учитываются первое стремление, хобби, немного интересы и совпадающие стремления родителей (например, если у обоих родителей одно из стремлений было к семье, есть большая доля вероятности, что и ребёнок его получит). Ничего себе огромный комментарий получился! А ведь рассказать есть ещё много о чём...
Ох, да, я тоже угораю по таблицам Excel, а ещё использую заметки в телефоне, но под Reasoned Pleasantview я завела отдельный блокнот. Кстати, в видео говорю про перенаселение, но сама очень люблю большие городки, всегда добавляла тауни в город, да побольше. Просто знаю, что остальные большое количество игровых симов считают проблемой. Кстати, свой канал я как раз решила сделать англоязычным именно потому, что знаю (в том числе и по себе), что русскоязычная аудитория не интересуется премейдами так, как зарубежная, а я хотела именно сделать Новосельск более логичным, чем я его до этого видела.
Omg you're actually SO brave to have the game running in the background unattended, I fear all of my sims would burn themselves AND their entire house to the ground 😂 Actually really agree with this take as a wants-based player! I noticed things got way more interesting and less repetitive when I mixed it up with trait mods and delijume's aspiration calculators to add sub-categories to the aspirations (tweaked a bit to my liking). But before implementing those new game rules I definitely got bored! I think vanilla Sims 2 is just not built for wants-based gameplay unless it's paired with rules you come up with yourself. Adding mods like autonomous breakup/engagement and reject engagement/marriage so sims have a little more free will has spiced things up a lot more in my game too. ACR tuned properly is a must as well. Great vid! 😊
I only use the wants for certain areas, like how well they do at college and even then, that also depends on how well i think they would do personally. I've always had a lot of fun making up storylines for my sims and it would be so boring if i just listened to there wants all the time.
School and college-related wants are especially tricky. They either do not appear at all or there are too many of them. Luckily one of my subscribers provided me with a good way to deal with them: if a sim's interest in school is lower than 7, they need to roll more than 7 to do their homework/assignment.
I love this video and I've already come to similar conclusions independently, especially regarding the aspirations. I never match them to the character of my sims because I find it more realistic. You can be extra shy but also aspire to build friendships, you can be family-oriented even if you are sloppy and grouchy, you can crave knowledge and also still be playful, etc. It just adds some spice and realism to the game. When it comes to the wants, I pay attention to them, but also sometimes I decide not to fulfill them all. Just like in real life, my sims aren't always able to fulfill their wants or avoid their fears (though I don't make them extra miserable on purpose). Relationship-wise, I never use any mods and I change relationships the way I want to, even if it's against what Maxis intended. For example, I mainly play in Riverblossom Hills. My custom-made adult sim befriended and married Patricia Wan. Gabe O'Mackey is married to Leod McGreggor. And they still find happiness. I also moved the Picaso family from Free Time to RH because who cares? 😂 I'm currently working on a project which I've never seen in any gameplay - the third oldest of 10 kids in Picaso family (Money aspiration, though the personality says popularity) is working on the robot-building badge to set up a restaurant which would employ just Servos. You actually inspired me to make a video about that process because the gameplays on youtube are either boring or made to test the limits of the game, rarely for actually creative reasons. ❤
I don't care about who I move in a certain neighborhood either 😂 I've always thought the Picaso family would suit Strangetown and Julien Cooke would like living in Veronaville.
Huh, really good valid points, and it really become noticeable once you point it out. It's really refreshing to see someone's unique approach and thougths! Another aspect of wants-based playstyle are the aspiration points that are, imho, pretty much useless. The way I used to play, those tend to just pile up reaching hundreds of thousands without any meaningful application. The elixir of life can be helpful, but it does not suit rotational gameplay at all. And so by default, there isn't much incentive or reward for fulfilling difficult wants. Still, I do pay attention to what my sims roll and treat those as "recommendations" rather than undeniable will of my sim that I must obey 😅 And as for aspiration points, I think I managed to come up with a system that incorporates them in my BACC/Legacy rules in a pretty balanced way, and I wonder if there are any other ideas on what you can do with those points 🤔
Aspiration rewards have always been a pain in the neck for me too. While the Elixir of Life is an absolute "no" to me (I guess it can be useful for different challenges tho), I'm currently thinking about replacing Don's hot tub with the Love Tub and adding an Electric Energizer on my sims' business lots as someone's recommended in the comments under my "Own a top-level business" video. But yeah, the most useful of them is easily the Money Tree. Its effect is also unlimited, so...
@@baddynaddy I wish there was a mod that added temporary buffs for aspiration points. Like the ones you get after a vacation, or simple lower decay for needs. The way I play, that woukd really be useful to minmax the hell out of it, heh
Hi love, so I think that everyone should play in the way that is fun for them, no? 😉 Wants-based play has its place, alongside playing according to a sims interests, traits, personalities and hobbies. Some people find it really fun and thats okay. I know that personally I have evolved from starting with wants-based play to moreso just taking wants into account alongside a lot of other considerations, and returning to how I used to play (before Pleasantsims ever made a video aha.) I dont think we need to crap on creators or say that things are boring or need to die if they dont 100% appeal to you, but rather sharing what you find fun ✌🏼 like "hey I know this is popular with players, thats cool, but heres how I play and I think its fun". I've also seen people crap on players who like rules and systems and spreadsheets and say "Ew how gross and boring" instead of simply saying, "thats cool but its not for me." I do hard agree with you on the problems playing with untuned ACR and the default Maxis chemistry system though 😅 ACR is a great mod when heavily tuned, and used with a modded chemistry system (plus maybe using the version compatible with Midge's Romantic Standards, and playing with the unlinked zodiac & personality mod).
Maybe it was sort of a click baiting title, but now I see in the comments that my video was sort of "eye-opening" for some players who'd felt their game was boring but hadn't quite put their finger on why. I'm sure that players who really enjoy playing wants-based (and don't feel pressured to do it like some commentators say) will remain faithful to this play style and we'll all be happy at the end 🌈☀️
@@baddynaddy I think one of the reasons I like wants based is because I just like coming up with stories based on the wants. it's fun trying to explain things like a don and mary-sue marriage that i wouldn't have paired together myself, and then I can act based off of that. there's mods that combat a lot of issues mentioned in the video as well. but tbh working towards goals and having something I can be a control freak over just itches my brain, it's a part of why i like simulation games with gameplay that can feel like "chores". i like having a little spreadsheet with info about my sims and calculators and it's not something that feels rewarding to replicate in ts3 or 4. also you're so right. Heather Huffington is an icon but right now I'm playing a base game megahood and just don't want to add anymore unnecessary sims so I leave the uni ones relatively untouched lol.
I have been so bored with this game the last couple years, I have also adopted wants based lets plays the past couple years.. I even tried excel spread sheets because of pleasant sims... So boring! I am going to reinvent the way i play this game, like I want to have FUN! Thank you for this video! Also i would love to see simmers create their own hoods with unique story lines more often, i am soooo bored of pleasant view
Creating custom hoods is my dream 😍 Unfortunately, with the amount of work needed for that I would probably have to stop doing anything for the channel for a couple of months, which is not something I want to do. 😔
This video put something into words that I’ve been having troubles putting my finger on. Tbh I never understood why simmers would fulfill every single want. For example, in real life it happens all the time that people want a kid really bad, but they wait until they are financially stable to have one. Meanwhile, simmers will let their sim families have another baby because the baby-obsessed family sim wanted it, when there is barely enough money in the bank to buy a pizza. The second-hand anxiety, I tell ya! PS: I thought it was really funny that you mentioned the popularity aspiration for yourself and they are the ones who roll wants about fights 😅
Well, this video received a much warmer welcome than I'd thought it would! Only one person cancelled their subscription and I think they're only 6 dislikes so far. So this isn't really a fight.😅 But your take definitely explains the channel name.
This video was super interesting! I play mostly wants-based, with ROS, tuned ACR and lots of micromanaging/storytelling. Your points definitely are making me rethink some things though. The Sims do get a bit boring when you play rotationally and have 10+ Knowledge Sims wanting to earn skills... which is where I'm at in my custom hood now. Happy belated 20th!
I had my husband create a website where it randomizes everything from my sims physical features, their turn offs and ons, personality points for each category, and aspirations. I get more variety this way and it seems more realistic. In what world would a zodiac sign mean everyone has the same aspiration?
I have a mod in my game that completely disables sims' negative reactions to cheating (only when they get spotted cheating by other sims they still get negative relationship with the witness, and it only affects sims that are married), I didn't really install it to disable cheating, I needed it for my polyamorous sims but I honestly really enjoy the control it gives me. I also play with my aging completely turned off and I calculate time passage completely manually, this allows me to adjust my sims' stories and play for as long as I need to, or cut certain moments in their lives short if I so desire. I personally go in a complete opposite direction with my gameplays, instead of letting the game play itself and letting mods and sim wants do the story telling I MUST have almost complete control over the story. I still allow the game to create plot points for me to explore, but I could never play with a mod like ACR. I treat my game like an animated book, or a movie I'm writing. And this is not me bashing on people who play this game differently, but I wanted to share my style of playing. Maybe I should start making Sims letsplays myself with how weird my play style is lol
The more variety on TH-cam - the better! BTW, I'm going to control the premades' lifespans manually too. The original system with happy sims having the longest lives is cool, but I want some sims to pass away earlier for the sake of realism. For example, I've always pictured Dina as a heavy smoker, so she should kick the bucket earlier than Nina, no matter how happy she is.
@@baddynaddy Yeah it's kinda sad how certain game mechanics might become useless if you control the game as much, since the amount of detail in sims 2's game mechanics is like art hahah. But the sims is a sandbox, it can be played MANY ways and you can experience these little touches put in by the developers any time you desire, so changing the way you play in my opinion is exactly what the sims is all about anyways.
I really enjoyed this video and would love one about your playstyle! I agree that ACR is a little over the top. It seems to just turn everyone into cheaters which makes absolutely no sense for most family aspirarion sims. I've never had any interest in downloading it based off let's plays that use it. Another YTer I think you would like is Matticore (hope i spelled it right) . I recently finished their legacy challenge and they assign aspirations and 2ndary aspirations based off personality (not zodiac sign) and also more so the vibe of the sim and her own mood of what she feels like playing (for example she had had two knowledge/romanace sims in a row and didn't want that combo anymore so picked fortune for the next person even though their personality didn't completely match that). "Rules" for videos games, esp a life sim, are meant to be broken, otherwise what's the point? The primary objective is to enjoy playing your game. Also totally agree with you re hobbies! Freetime was my favorite expansion pack. And I even reroll one true hobbies because the same type of sims get the same type of hobbies. Or I'll just straight up pick their OTH based on the story line I have in mind or the vibe the sim is giving. I had a child sim that was often autonomously catching butterflies so I gave her the nature OTH.
Yeah i remember giving up on any strict system on assigning aspirations to sims once they become teens because 1) its repetitive and 2) no matter what system i used, there are premades that inherently break those rules and are better and more interesting for it. If premades followed the zodiac rule for example Don would be a popularity sim and not the quintessential romance sim we know him as. I have the same feelings with wants-based gameplay for the reasons you stated. I've decided aspirations should be decided by a dice at most if i don't already have a plan for that sim. And wants i will ignore unless it works with what i see them as and they eventually start shaping into the sim i imagined with matching wants
The purpose of Aspiration is to spice up the gameplay by giving a different play style. Aspiration is mean give the sims purpose and to dictated what kind of want and fear they will have and these simple or big wants make the sims happy. Like it is a new bar you need to take care off. Also giving interesting personality trait. So, I am curious about why Want-based play style should die. What is also predictable is the aspiration-choosing system. They based on the astrological sign even if the personality point doesn't align with it. 12:0313:34 14:53 Yeah, I don't like the secondary aspiration thing. It's like you can't fulfill the primary one so the secondary act like a "safety net".
Personally I like to play want based oriented, but I don´t do it that extreme lol, that´s why also always give my Sims a secondary aspiration. The secondary aspirations are always chosen by vibe, that´s it. I don´t really understand that calculator tbh. Lilith Pleasant for example got in my game a secondary pleasure aspiration bc I feel like that suits her life and past. Angela on the other hand got a secondary family aspiration (but I almost always make her and Dustin break up hihi). Dirk Dreamer for example got a knowledge secondary aspiration bc he had a secret aspiration token for that and Jennifer Burb got a secondary family aspiration bc she also got a secret aspiration token for family. With main aspirations I do orientate on the zodiac signs but I made a sheet for myself where I changed it around so that it´s actually even (meaning two zodiac signs for each aspiration). On the sheet I also added a "second best aspiration" which is for Sims that go to college where when they´re asked if they want to change their main aspiration I roll a dice and if it says yes then I change the Sims´ main asoiration to the "second best" one of the sheet.
That's an interesting way to deal with that university time pop-up.😍 I keep my sims aspirations at uni in 98% of cases, but maybe now I'll roll a dice to see if they will change it at university. I think a 15% chance should be enough.
I like wants based but I love anything that encourages me to try something different. As well as wants based, I roll dice for lots of things too, eg I'll flip a coin when a sim ages to an adult to see if they obtain a secondary aspiration and then if they do, will roll a dice 1-5 to decide what aspiration it is. If a sim doesn't roll for a secondary aspiration when they age into an adult i'll do another coin flip for when they age into an elder (makes me think of a midlife crisis lol). I also use cheats to create sims with more 'extreme' personalities (the ability to add more personality points). For things that are guaranteed to happen, for example you KNOW that a sim is going to accept a proposal if their relationship and flags are maxed, I add a certain percentage chance the interaction will fail based on their personality/aspiration. For example two family sims may have 10% chance of failing a proposal and 2 romance sims may have 60% chance of failing a proposal. Loving the funeral attire 😂
Rolling a dice for getting a secondary aspiration at the age transitioning is a very cool idea! 👍🏼 Perhaps some sims are more one-dimensional than others. Thank you! A skirt instead of a veil is what made the attire look complete. 😂
A very interesting video on wants based play and other things. I actually have my own neighborhood that I mostly play in. It's a Prosperity Challenge the idea being to create a number of families (by dice roll) and see how prosperous your neighborhood can become in 5 generations. According to the rules whenever a sim becomes a teen I have to roll for their aspiration and secondary asp. And I actually prefer it this way. I really don't see the point in having aspirations tied to a sims zodiac. I always felt is was too limiting. And as you pointed out, not everyone's personality matches what their zodiac says they should be. I will play wants based, but only to a point. For instance I will not keep forfilling sims wants to buy things if it's going to make them broke, or do something like quit their job when they're only at level , their wife doesn't work and they already have 3 kids! No way you're quitting your job! I will let my sims in college pick their own major and I may let a sim without a job LTW pick their own job. Also, since I roll 2 dice for their aspirations, one for the main one and one for the secondary, if I roll doubles they become grilled cheese secondary. Grilled cheese sims aren't possible the other way are they? I don't mind a little wants based play but, yes, too much of it will become too repetitive. I don't mind when people mix things up once in a while. Even if they do things in their game I'd never do it doesn't mean it's not fun to watch. One thing I've always felt about the sims is that any number of people can play the same neighborhood and come up with different outcomes. But only if they don't regiment it completely.
A pretty cool way to get grilled cheese secondary 🤔 (I think it's also available as a primary if the aspiration reward that allows to change aspiration malfunctions)
I consider my style of gameplay to be semi-wants based, but I don't do much of what you highlight in this video. You're certainly correct that playing that way strips the game of a lot of its fun randomness and the diversity that sims can showcase. Wants, for me, are guides, as are fears. I pay attention to a sim's fears because sometimes fulfilling them is good for storytelling. I'm also very against assigning aspirations based on interests or zodiacs because of how samey it all becomes. I'm a big believer in what Jessa said many years ago... that sims tell us what their aspirations should be. I'll only use a calculator or randomizer if I'm totally stuck on what to give a sim for a secondary. I'm always looking for how my sims' wants and fears can help inspire a story for them, but it's only a small part. I don't do much tuning with ACR, but I don't struggle much with cheating being the story in every house. Maybe I'm micromanaging more than I realize and preventing ACR from really doing its thing. If so, I don't plan on changing that up! All that said, I think sometimes regardless of style of gameplay you'll still end up seeing a lot of similar outcomes, and that's because I think many of us have favorite tropes for each neighborhood, some of them directly inspired by the outcomes or stories others have shared. For instance, I still to this day like Cassandra and Don together because a Simblr story I read when I was young. In most Pleasantviews that I play, their marriage happens. And that works for me because the way things play out for them still seem to be different each time in my game. Of course, if your goal with sharing content as a content creator is to entertain and create something unique, then maybe it becomes more important to be different, but I imagine a lot of the time the repetitive stories have less to do with letting ACR and wants dictate, and more with having favorite tropes or pairings. Of course, that's more based on what I've observed from Simblr, since I don't watch a lot of Sims 2 content on TH-cam precisely because I tend to hate how... uninteresting and reductive (imo) the takes are on premades from the creators I've watched. Like, I'll see similar stories from two different Simblrs and eat them up because they're somehow just more fun and engaging more with the whacky storylines that come with the Sims 2 than most of the let's plays I've seen on YT. I'm excited now to explore what you’ve done in your game, as it sounds like you deliberately try to push outside the box for premades. Maybe I'll even be inspired by some of your stories, which is one of my favorite parts of seeing what and how others are playing and telling stories with the Sims 2.
I think one of the factors that helped me to keep it fresh with the premades is that I'd never really played them myself (of course, I'd tried to but I'd always preferred my own sims or townies) and I don't have any favourite tropes and pairings 😄
ever since i've started playing historical, i stopped playing wants-based. because even if i want to, my sims struggle to fulfill their wants, or just don’t have the time to do so. because they have to provide for their family first. this leads to them being in aspiration failure and growing up badly. i do a lot to keep my sims happy, but a large household that runs a farm for a living isn’t as happy as a rich family with servants
I personally recently got bored with just wants based and playing same things over and over again. In my newest PVST hood, I basically changed half of sims aspirations and avoiding most of 'popular' pairings of the game (Except Don with everyone who walks on 2 legs and is YA and older) Also changed some sexualities and I'm having much more fun now just with that one of many other changes that I will make. Thanks to those changes, I got: - Brandi not wanting to get married thanks to her serial romance secondary, but still wants babies so she had Don's (ONLY) child and currently pregnant with Herb's - Dusting not wanting college or better career because he's pleasure, so Brokes remain poor as intended. - Cassandra getting with Pascal Curious and joining the science lair, focusing more on science than family making. They have only Pascal's baby and one of their own - Vidcund and Lazlo are not scientist as base game career but Natural Scientist and Paranormal respectively - Lazlo is not knowledge, instead he's romance/pleasure as he's the playful of the bunch. I can add, he's failing it miserably, no one wants him. So he's just cringe uncle who clings to act like a teenager. - Darren Dreamer is not used for Brandi or Cassandra to be their husband. He enjoys his painting and has fling or 2 with some townies when he gets lonely. - When Nervous escapes, he inherits Olive's evil magic powers, so he becomes emperor of Evil and removing anyone who stands on his way, except for Circe. He's crushing on her since their evilness matches and Circe being master manipulator gets rid of Loki with Thanatos' (Nervous' new name) help. - Lucy and Alexander NOT being together every single time. I swear, I can pair every other sim with other sims than their usual, but those 2 always find themselves together. This time I worked hard to avoid them and Lucy ended being with Blonde cashier, having quads. Toddler phase was NOT fun - Whole Grunt family being in closet and boys getting out of it while Buzz still being very against him while trying to suppress his feelings - Pol and Jenny just enjoying their retirement with few cats instead of children in their golden age - Nina, instead of being secondary character for Dina and Don, became main character, focusing on her love of athletics, enjoying parties and being with just one sim as hopeless romance sim instead being female Don - Dina stays Gold Digger and to secure her position as Goth, has Mortimer's kids who get raised by Mortimer and Butlers. She avoids them like a plague. And in few instances when she had Don's baby before marrying Mortimer, Nina is the one who raises the baby, basically adopting it so Dina avoids scandal. Later in her life, she sometimes enter Show Biz career just so she's not all the time in house drinking, making a story that she uses Goth influence to get into few commercials or short term roles so she can stay into high social status. If she ever get into another relationship, she's either with Mr Big or Malcolm Landgraab, but usually after Mortimers death, she keep Don as lover and remain single rich widow who likes to vacation on beach. Biggest help was introducing much more townies into relationships with premades. Mary Sue is prime example, after divorce, she relaxes a bit and start focusing more on her, so getting back into pottery (per her bio) and enjoying life more. Which actually help her with career much more than being stressed all the time. Relaxed Mayor > Stressed Mayor who's hated by everyone And funniest thing is that Sims 4 (which I disliked before I found my way of playing, rotationally) and Pleasantview remade (by AnotherPlumbob, it's majestic and deep, fulled with OG lore with something new mixed in) helped me see that doing things differently is much more fun than restarting PV every 2 months after 3rd round because everything is exactly the same.
OMG! Your PVST sounds awesome "Lazlo is not knowledge, instead he's romance/pleasure as he's the playful of the bunch. I can add, he's failing it miserably, no one wants him. So he's just cringe uncle who clings to act like a teenager." This is my kind of Lazlo! I love that for him!! Cringe Uncle that thinks he's the next Don Lothario but is just... not. LOL
I fulfill wants if I don’t know what to do in my game, but I also try to invent my own stories. Right now I‘m playing one of my college Sims is in love with a guy who’s not that interested. I made her change her hair color and get fit to make him like her more, but they have almost no chemistry. Relationship points build so slowly. But I really want a bad relationship for a change.
I think playing wants-based in the sims 3 makes more sense because wants depend of personality traits and individual lifetime wishes. Only bookworms have wants about reading books and going to the library, for example. As for your other question, I'm from Russia.
I must check out more of your videos! Want based gameplay makes the town boring and overwhelming for me. Currently I'm changing how I play in TS3 and TS2, and in TS3 I'm having a blast with 5th generation. I need some inspiration to make TS2 fun again. I don't use ACR anymore, but I have no idea about what to do with some sims. Glad I found your channel!
I’ve moved to something I call character based gameplay, which I consider an expansion of wants based. I still pay attention to their wants and try to fulfill them. But I pay more attention to their overall personality, aspirations, hobbies and traits (from 3t2 traits). When their wants are boring or repetitive to me, I make decisions on what to do with their life based on their personality. Then the decisions don’t feel like something I’m picking completely randomly, it’s in keeping with character so it feels organic.
Also, PREACH about untuned ACR! If people love the drama and the many babies then great, but it’s frustrating when people complain about those aspects when it’s completely tuneable.
This is my preferred way as well. Thanks for putting a name to it!
This is also how I play too. I love wants based gameplay, but it needed the extra layer of depth this play style provides in my opinion. Also, I don't like the sims 4 due to its lack of gameplay and how buggy it is. I never could get past those enough to even delve into the lore. In the sims 2 and sims 3, the sims feel like people who you're trying to help figure out life. The sims 4 feels like your playing with dolls.
I saw your video on this and highly recommend watching it! I love the amount of depth you add to your neighbourhoods :)
I agree with this sm. I would like to add that a lot of wants-based players love to play the premade sims, but they don't realize that what makes the premade sims so special is their unique storylines which couldn't have been created through wants-based play (for example, the Beakers and Nervous), and their character depth. So then, when the generation of premades dies off, the next generation of sims will have no character depth -- they will just be one dimensional characters whose story and personality is solely composed of their aspiration and their one true hobby.
You're absolutely right. Lots of stuff related to the sims lore was done through cheats. Especially the relationships. That's why I don't mind tweaking them here and there whenever I feel it might help the story.
Also you create character depth by playing. I've never had any struggle at all playing the next generation of the Sims. Once again most people don't go strictly by wants. They incorporate those ones and use them.
Wants-based play style does get repetitive very quickly because you end up doing the same thing over and over again. It's especially noticeable when playing toddlers and child sims. It's like eating the same cereal every single day of your life, it gets boring. At least in the Sims 3 you can dismiss the wants you don't care about or that don't make much sense to you.
The comparison with cereal was in my head too 👍🏼 The same cereal: breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And yes, overall wants-based play style is MUCH more suitable for The Sims 3, because everyday wants depend on individual lifetime wish and personality traits.
I don't watch that much TS2 gameplays outside of Marticore's and maybe kattay's, but personally I think a good balance could be the key for some. I like Sims 2 for it's own autonomy, and i sometimes take their wants into consideration (especially if they're like crazy ones, as an example Dina rolled a want right after Mortimers death to romance Alexander - her step-son.), but truly where the game becomes so much fun is when you add your imagination into it. 2 Examples, one from my old Pleasantview where I paired up Don with Brandi and one in Strangetown, where I made Olive "kill" the Beakers for Nervouses escape where it orphaned their child in the process and create a generational murder mystery and seak for revenge storyline. And none of these scenarios would be possible if i stuck to the wants based system.
Anyways, very good video and an interesting insight. xx
Olive killing the Beakers is a very good one 👍🏼
I think the major issue with a wants based system is that it sets sims up for success by default. They will have aspirations that match their personality, avoid bad things happening to them easily, etc. It would be interesting if the knowledge/fortune sim is lazy and that actual *hinders* their success? Or mean and/or shy popularity/romance sims also would also be interesting. It would be interesting for a romance sim to have a secondary family aspiration (or vice versa) so they’ll have conflicting wants and fears. I think what’s interesting about Sims 2 is all the differences aspects of Sims that combine differently. Why limit those combinations and just make all the sims carbon copies?
Edit: I also think an important thing you can do that reduces overpopulation is oftentimes ignored: plenty of mods allow you to townify playable sims. This reduces the number of households you rotate to a constant number, while you can still keep the sims around!
I agree. Happy sim sometimes equals boring sim. Even in that into to the game (not sure how to call it) a lot of sims are experiencing aspiration failure (one sim is begging for money in the street, the other one is cuddling a flour sack baby and three sims at once are being visited by a therapist). And the intro was meant to show the most interesting aspects of the game like age transitioning, toddlers etc. Aspiration failures were also a big chunk of the new content.
The amount of times I've tired to watch a let's play and just can't finish it because the player keeps saying they wish X exciting thing would happen, but don't do it because it's not in the wants panel... The worst for me is when creators get so excited for Mary Sue to catch Daniel cheating, but because their relationship is so low and ACR largely remains untuned, she never cares! So boring to watch.
I love this! I hate how wants based is talked about almost as an ethical choice. The game encourages you to fulfill wants every now and then anyway unless you want constant aspiration failure, thinking of the sim as a character and what fits that characterisation makes a lot more sense than just fulfilling wants. Same with aspirations, thinking of what seems to actually suit the sim and what you want to do makes a lot more sense. I love having shy popularity sims or any other a bit contradictory combination. It also makes it easier to interpret different sims’ wants in different ways.
A shy popularity sim - that's probably me 🥲
Literally no one cares if you do wants based play style or not. No one is shaming you literally no one cares about this. Y'all created an entire idea in your head that simply isn't what wants based play is.😮
I totally agree with this! Wants based is great but it can hardly drive the story. Your comment on the shy popularity sim reminded me of this custom world I downloaded...I think it's called Paradise. The first pre-made family there has a relatively shy mom with a popularity aspiration and almost no friends outside her house. It made no sense at first but looking into her other areas: oceanography career with 0 interest points in the environment....I almost wanted to change her career to sports cuz fitness is her OTH...but decided she was simply a wannabe. The shy girl that wanted to be in with the popular girls and since she lived on an island (her workaholic husband's idea to settle down there), she thought being in the oceanography career would help her fit in/make friends. The wannabe aspect of her also explains why she's in denial about her husband cheating and trying to keep up appearances and continue acting like they are a happy family. Honestly, they've become my favorite family on the island since I leaned into the contradictions. I'm letting a mix of their wants and automous actions decide if they will stay together or divorce.
It’s kind of pointless to fulfill that many wants too, after awhile you can start affording enough elixirs of life to stay young forever
another super important point: it makes sims happy all the time. i somewhat abandoned the wants-based playstyle just so they could have mental breaks more often
😈
I see what you mean but I think the game itself is just delightfully unpredictable at it's core so with the right mods and such wants based really works for me. This comment made me laugh because it reminded me of Bianca Monty in my current megahood.
Poor girl has tried to kiss Oberon Summerdream multiple times due to ACR and has so many memories about being rejected and having mental breakdowns. Titania of course no longer fucks with her. She's even tried to do this while I'm not playing her - it's always Oberon.
I sent her out for like, two whole five day rotations when she wasn't at work trying to find her someone she actually liked to fall in love with and marry like her wants say, since she clearly really desires a family. However, it just wasn't happening because due to my turn on and turn offs mod being pretty different (a lot more personality/interest based options than physical) she hasn't liked anyone that much (and I haven't really liked anyone who isn't already taken with her either, certainly not enough to break up relationships I think should stay together) to roll wants to pursue them specifically and now she's halfway through adulthood.
I decided to move her in with Kent (who is ofc gay in my game, so ACR won't pair them) who has been seeing different sims but hasn't gotten the want to settle down with any of them. Next time I get to her in my rotations I'm going to have her adopt and they'll raise the kids together as roommates, but I'm not going to give up on fulfilling her wants to fall in love and get married. It just might come later in life. This is just an example of how I let wants based gameplay decide my stories for me.
Super agree with this take! Wants-based is boring in the long run. Some of us have played this game since release, I can't imagine replaying the same scenarios over and over again. I pay attention to their wants but I prefer coming up with unique stories and scenarios. 12:20 agree with this so much!!! As an astro girlie the zodiac sign compatibility is my sims 2 villain origin story 😅 I detach the zodiac signs from the aspirations and personality points for this reason. This way every sim is different!
If I had a simoleon for every time a sim rolled a want to go bowling or eat food at a restaurant, I could purchase “113 Wright Way”
😂
Oh my god i could not agree more with most of your points! I tried to play purely wants based, I really did, but its so much less interesting than making up your own story based on your own perception of the sims.
I ESPECIALLY hate that contrived secondary aspiration calculator that everyone loves to use, specifically because it assigns romance to sims that were clearly written to be wholesome family sim like Jill Smith and John Burb. I hate how John gets such a bad rap in the community, ONLY BECAUSE people treat the aspiration calculator like its cannon, when its not, and they act like being a cheater is his singular, defining personality trait.
I feel like assigning aspirations to zodiac signs is like still okay and alright you know. But choosing the secondary aspiration based on the interests and using a calculator never made sense to me bc 1. it is COMPLETELY fanmade and made up and 2. the interests of the Sims can change throughout their life (if I remeber correctly)
tbf there's so many different ones to choose from. I felt the same about romance secondaries if we're talking about the pleasantsims calculator but found one I liked (as in, it mostly gives me secondary aspirations that I agree with or find interesting) that also calculates 3t2 traits - which is great because it makes me use traits I probably wouldn't have picked out myself. speaking of, I use that to make sure all of my romance sims aren't the same cheater blueprint since the hopeless romantic trait gets rid of cheating wants.
wholesome family sims can still have romance
I definitely agree with your opinion on untuned acr. It annoys me so much how people constantly break sims characters and have babies constantly for the sake of drama.
I do make my sims have more babies than necessary sometimes, but I do it mostly for the sake of recessive genes.
How people play their own personal game shouldn’t annoy you… that’s incredibly bizarre
@@Jilly-Sammy-Bean I mean people who make videos about the game, I really dont care what people do personally for their enjoyment
I can't help but feel as if Cindy accidentally created this culture of new Sims 2 players that NEED their hand held and to be told what to do, or else they CANNOT enjoy an open-ended life simulator.
I'm also very glad that you called out untuned ACR, because everything I see involving that mod looks like a nightmare to play with. Way too many babies, very high potential of inbreeding, and, ironically, it takes away the player agency and control that strictly wants-based gives you.
I'm one of those people... or at least I used to be. I installed the game because of Cindy and started playing the way she did, but have found my own style over the years. I still play wants based, but I definitely will ignore wants if they don't line up with my storylines, and similarly I'll do things they don't want if I think it'll be more fun. I don't play premades though, so I've never fallen into the trap of just copying let's plays. My sims are all mine, with their own unique storylines, motivations, dreams, etc. Cindy was a great re-introduction to the game but I definitely suggest people try to find their own play style instead of following her ruleset word for word. Happy simming!
Very good points!
That's why I have a set of rules to cure my indecisiveness, but bend them if need be. I'm an observer, so I also try to look at the tendencies a certain Sim shows me e.g. in their childhood and make note of them. I also came up with a little different aspiration assigning method that ignores zodiac signs and focuses more on personality points. With exceptions, of course (Sims' vibes and backgrounds are important, I also often try to not give the kids exactly the same aspirations as the parents because I'm aware of the genetic personality).
Interests are importatnt because I need them to do something in the game except chat results... So I assign jobs based on interests but it only makes sense with the "no aged interests" mod, otherwise it will be repetitive as hell.
I think a lot of wants-based players ditch hobbies because without any mods for it, the wants become all about hobbies. To me, the OTH of a Sim is rather important and I have a special collection in my buy mode with all the hobby-related objects to choose something for most Sims.
And I think people who don't tone down ACR, never played a neighborhood long enough to deal with overpopulation 😅 I can't imagine having risky woohoo set to more than 2% (it's usually 0) and auto TFB enabled. I've had an overpopulated Pleasantview even before ACR because I was baby-crazy, and I am just now (after 10 years since I started it) getting to cut down the number of families for this neighborhood to be playable again. I'd never do an uberhood though, my limit is 16 families. But the "Extended Family Treated as Family" mod is crucial to avoid inbreeding.
But well, I'm not exactly a wants-based player, I guess I'm like... half? 😆 If a Sim has nothing to do, I'll look at their wants. I also like to use the *lack* of wants to *not* do something, like hardly any Sim in my game will reach the career top (usually fortune and knowledge Sims, so that's also repetitive... well). I don't care when Sims want babies, I have my own system of how many kids they will have and when. I'll lock these wants if I plan a baby for them soon because it's a big want. University is very wants-based for me though because I desperately needed variety in that area. And now, graduating with honors is extremely rare because man, Sims are laaaazy 😆 And even in a half-wants-based gameplay, my Sims are often unhappy... lmao.
I barely watched any of Cindy's let's plays but wow... that Bobby thing must've been really disappointing! Such an interesting Sim with the two aspirations. I love secondary aspirations and give them to Sims when they become adults to expand their personality (not based on interests though, that's stupid lmao).
The only thing I don't really agree with here is the Romance Sims... even if you imagine they're looking for a soulmate, they will roll wants to woohoo with multiple Sims and have a negative memory of getting married etc. I really wish this aspiration was more nuanced.
For your last point, I play with the hopeless romantic trait mod, so it stops romance wants from rolling for specific sims! I only have a handful of those traits and they r so helpful cuz i'm a player who needs to see their hc actually reflected in the game otherwise it takes me out from it lol
@@itsjeiem cool! I've been thinking of getting only a few of them for very specific Sims
Common Marticore W
OMG, Marticore herself! (shaking like the Sims 3 sims when they see a celebrity).😱
I believe all aspirations could be more nuanced: for example, it would be fun to play a family sim who's really close with their parents and doesn't want to leave their family nest. But all family sims seem to want is to become independent asap. But either way, for a 2004 game the Sims 2 already has a TON of ways to make sims interesting.
Thats, why I love to watch Your gameplays. Either on eng or pl channel. They're just not as the others. I even tried to look for other gameplays, but I only have bunch of people that I really like to watch.
I feel like a lot more players should also add the premade Sims from the college worlds. Like so many people say themselves that Sim State University is supposedly the matching university of Pleasantview but then never add the universities premade Sims to Pleasantview. I mean yeah that would be a lot of Sims but still. Or marrying of the Sims to the townies of Pleasantview
Yeah, I'm really happy I've added the Sim State Premades to my rotation. It gives a lot of new storytelling possibilities.
That's because University sucks and playing through it with characters you really aren't connected to isn't fun
@@Fizzypopization understandable but if you want sth completely new and fresh (like new potential love interests or parents in the main neighbourhood) then it is some necessary work to do
I'm a simmer who loves playing by rules and systems, and I outgrew Cindy's system pretty quickly. I still do wants based play for the most part but the biggest factor in my gameplay is unpredictability. I'll assign random zodiacs and aspirations on the fly for varieties sake, and do my own stories if something happens that inspires it, but I find if I micromanage to make big sweeping decisions for my sims they don't feel like their own characters, they feel passive, like dolls in a dollhouse, which isn't how I enjoy playing the game. I tend to get bored of them way faster than I do playing wants-based.
I whole-heartedly agree with you. While wants are a good guide, especially when you don't have any particular ideas for a Sim, it shouldn't be the only factor in driving our Sims lives. I used to use Cindy's aspiration calculator style and did notice how one-note some of my Sims were becoming. For my gameplay nowadays, I randomize their interests upon becoming teens (because we all like different things than we did as little kids, right?) and I have been using an iteration of sophiethepuffin's aspiration calculator (The Crumpulator from LordCrumps), which has made every aspiration type so much more interesting. Although I use it a lot, sometimes I like to just say, "you know what? This sim is gonna be this aspiration. Why? Because I said so." Sometimes you gotta take control to spice up the gameplay, and that's where this play style falls short.
I was kinda confused at first since you made some points (like ACR, how to choose aspirations, hobbies) that are not part of want-based gameplay but then I realized the video is more about Pleasant Sims gameplay style than just about the want-based rule
I do agree that playing solely want-based is repetitive, The Sims 2 has multiple mechanics, and you cannot base your entire gameplay in just one. I personally love want based gameplay and I think its what works for me, you just have to choose which wants fit both the character you're playing and the story you want to play/tell with them, while also doing things out of what they roll
I also don't like always having the same outcome, so i don't always make dina a gold digger, sometimes she evolves, and sometimes she doesn't, and so with every other sim
About the inbreeding I think its a general Sims 2 problem you'll have with any type of rotational gameplay (unless you play uberhood); the aspirations I agree, i don't choose them that way; and hobbies I do have mods that reduce the frequency of the wants, I still make them focus on their hobby everyday, but the wants are sometimes annoying and dumb
Overall, I think there's no gameplay style that should die and everyone should just play the way they enjoy their own game, while also not forcing their style into other players
I agree with most of your message. Yes, sometimes the characters should evolve, that's 100% true.
Of course, everyone is free to play the way they want, but if such CONTENT (I was talking about simmers who share their gameplay) is watched from outside it really looks too similar and it's not really interesting to watch. Everyone plays the way they like, but why post the same stuff and force someone else's gameplay rules on yourself?
@@baddynaddy i totally agree with that! what most people need to understand is that the reason pleasant sims got such a big audience for a sims 2 channel was bc she introduced an entire new way to play the game to a bunch of simmers! it is sad that some want to push her rules into others, we need more simmers making up new play styles and rules
I play fears-based. Basically I only avoid my Sims’ fears as much as I can, unless I need them for storytelling purposes. Wants-based made me burn out on the game so much faster
I have always had a problem with following rules. So, while I have some rules in my game, I believe in being flexible about it. Inflexibility is the death of creativity. Which to me is the whole purpose of playing the Sims. Good vid.
Thank you! Everything is great in moderation 🧘
thissss
I've played my own "custom" hood for almost 2 years (started as random sims i made and then i stablished a rotation), i never really liked the want based playstyle but i have a few rules and calculators to force myself to go out of my comfort zone. My most important rule is that if i get the feel of doing something, then just ignore what the rest of my rules say lol.
My motto is that rules are important to not get bored but at the end of the day just do what you want and make stuff up.
I've found that sims rarely are mean to eachother and become enemies, speciallu family members, so i have cheated the hell out of their relationship scores to get family drama, it has happened naturally when i've least expected it too.
If i had gone full wants based there is no way i could be on rotation 22 without getting extremelly bored lol
The "not to get bored" rule is an absolute must-have! 😍
15:08 The Secondary Aspiration Calculator is a nightmare to me. The people got so convinced that Cindy's calculations were so precise, but in reality, most of this calculations made the premades have an terrible mischaracterization.
Oh yes, in her letsplay she was also calculating the secondary aspirations pretty late in her sims lives (luckily she did acknowledge that later), which resulted in way too many secondary pleasure or romance sims.
Yes i never took her calculator as the “canon” result, but unfortunately some did. For example, John usually ends being a serial romantic with that calculator which is a HUGE mischaracterisation. There are many different calculators people should explore.
This!! I am now at the point where I will stop using that calculator because Sims always have super high culture and entertainment points and they are never interested in toys and animals, and also money and crime. Therefore my Sims all end up being secondary pleasure or popularity and never family or fortune. Now I know why 😢
I thought I was growing out of the sims 2 after playing wants based because the community said it was the right way to play so subconsciously I played this way but you really opened my eyes on this topic, definitely gonna think out of the box now, and you’re completely right about ACR, it gets very repetitive
I started playing a wants based style in my own hood, I hated it for a lot of reasons mostly in this video. I never used ACR or assigned aspirations based on personality. I always use dice rolls to decide them, because then whatever personality they have, the aspiration they get is what they get. A lazy fortune Sim? Good luck. A shy romance sim? Deal with it. I find it more fun than deciding based on something out of my control. I make woohoo risky by rolling 2 d6 dice, if I roll 10-12, it has to be a try for baby. I do this for every woohoo and I find I have a good balance of planned vs unplanned kids. I also tend to avoid woohoo unless they want to woohoo or want to have a kid (I don't roll in that case, I just let them try)
I fw this heavily! If I'm being honest, the wants/fears system is a very useful tool WHEN aiming for a playstyle based on min-maxxing each scenario of the game, because aspiration points allow you to access the Aspiration Rewards-an exclusive catalog of items that make some tasks easier, like the Thinking Cap or Pasteur's Smart Milk, but storywise? A wants-based gameplay destroys the fundamental pillar by which this game stands, and that is flexibility and chance.
That's why BACC and Legacy Challenges are appealing to a lot of people, because they perfectly capture the magic of The Sims 2.
Your takes are brilliantly valid! I never understood limiting oneself to a certain set of overcomplicated rules when there are endless possibilities in how you can play the game. I'm surprised people are foolish enough to find joy in adopting the same play style on the same set of premades and expecting anything new or interesting to happen, like haven't you already watched 9 youtubers follow the same cookie cutter storyline?!
This is why I play vibes-based, anything I do is on a whim and I only resort to listening to their wants if it's the absolute last resort; forget your aspiration points, I'm playing to satisfy myself! I have no weird system or calculator, any defining trait of my sims is decided by how I view their potential life trajectory - who says having 2 outgoing points can't make you a popularity sim? I remember making my new baby a knowledge sim because her mother gave birth in a thinking cap.
My recent favourite way to play is a Minecraft x Rags to Riches x Legacy, where I plop a single sim down in the biggest empty lot and build an empire from there with little to no restrictions. This takes place in Bluewater Village of course as it's one of the less popular hoods, so you don't see people share their 10th "Florence x Malcolm" clone baby post of the day. The townies there are nice to pair up with too because you'd naturally be less familiar with them than the PV sims.
I honestly don't watch any premade let's play regardless of the creator's personal play style, so I'd love to see you make a video on how you run your game! Love the OFB video from a while back btw x
Your example of giving your sim a knowledge aspiration because of the Thinking Cap got me rolling on the floor! Thank you for sharing your experience💌
I never took “wants” as a leading strict hand really, more like as a sign of who the Sim is and what they value. I am also a writer so I want some flexibility if I get an idea for a story path…but it is always a story path that can and will change with the right temptation at any moment and that could be a sim my sim is totally ignoring. And sometimes that temptation is linked to going WITH a want and sometimes the temptation is going AGAINST the want. I find it very easy to get stuck in a rut with Sims 2 due to the classic pairings and I needed to break it. Also sometimes I see a want and I am just like ‘nah, that’s not good for you. Lets go down this choice path instead’. Twas way more fun.
But I would take wants as a motivation for next steps if I hit a wall in what I wanted to do next. Just like I do not like skill maxing every sim as I find that boring, I do not like maxing every career or every student being an A student, or only having the goal to make more simoleans (rags to riches), so I adjusted my play style and wants are more like guiding hands not hard fast rules. I know where I want my sims to get and sometimes that’s just middle class satisfaction. They don’t need the mansion. But some sims I play for the mansion and if that means ignoring them wanting a kid a few times until I think they are ready, that’s fine.
Despite playing mostly wants-based I can't relate to a lot of points because I've never liked PleasantSims rather strict gameplay rules (or the premades). I do assign main aspirations under consideration of personality points/hobbies, but storytelling has always been the more important factor. Also, as soon as I'll have to calculate anything manually I'm out lol
I had to laugh at the untuned ACR section though, because being in some Sims 2 online spaces I've seen so many screenshots of people showing off their 10 Don Lothario children who all look the same despite having several different mothers. Guy really doesn't know what contraception is, does he?
The reason I started playing mostly wants based is becuase I wanted my game to be harder. University especially was only an excuse for me to max some of my Sims skills, and I had a lot more Sims graduate with honors than necessary. Wants-based gameplay cut that down a lot while still not preventing my non-knowledge Sims from graduating.
What personally bothers me about playing with my Sims wants in mind is how their aspiration will permanently stay pretty high unless a family member dies, which doesn't just prevent breakdowns but also unecessary cruelty (read: drama)
It's kinda hard to cause drama in the game without cheating involved. You'll need to actively provoke it, especially when your Sims aspiration isn't red.
I think that's a big part why I'm mostly playing historical gameplay now, since my Sims luxuries are so few that it becomes much harder to fulfill their wants and the constant tragedies make for good storylines.
I don't get wanting to remove hobbies from the game either, since they tend to be a big part of mine. Although I do grind a bit too much for my Sims one true hobby. So many gym bros and virtuosos... I should really randomize them every now and then.
In the end wants are just a part that feeds into the storyline I make up around my Sims anyways. One of my current favourites is a very shy and nerdy primary romance Sim who loves writing and the supernatural. He used to film a ghost hunting webshow with his sister and is now trying to make a quick buck in college by writing trashy fantasy romance, living vicariously though his characters instead of being out there finding love like he wants to. A good part of his story was caused by me trying (and failing) to fulfill his wants
People should play however they want to play because it's their playtime and it's their game. And if you don't want to play that way that's fine but why does it matter that they do? I usually do a mix like most wants based players. Most of us are not strictly playing to wants, but incorporate them.
Sims 2 is around because a lot of people like playing the pre-mades.
i hope sims 2 letsplayers will start branching out because all the letsplays feel so similar. the only sims that have any drama are romance sims and the drama is always cheating. its one difference ive noticed with ts2 & ts4 drama-seeking gameplay- since the sims 4 doesn't have as good autonomy and there aren't any exciting premade stories, simmers actually get creative in telling their stories and often add some roleplaying that brings depth to a sometimes shallow game. oshinsims, for example, has a multiple season ts4 series where the inciting dramatic incident is an affair, but the story goes on to have a lot of emotion & drama about getting divorced when you have kids, loving a child that isn't biologically yours, half-sibling dymanics, dating as a single mother who has a career, the grief when your parent gets old and dies, and more. i wish sims 2 players would put effort into making their stories interesting instead of requiring the game to come up with all the plot for them.
THIS IS SO REAL! (also I love Lovesick, so good)
This is not a compliment on TS4 at all (even if I still like the game), but the fact that it's so shallow really got people to be more creative, while in TS2 everything feels the same all the time bc everyone follows the same formula with the same pre-made sims (while in TS4 no one gives a fuck about the pre-mades lol). TS2 is the better game by a very long shot, but TS4 has the most creative community imo
I feel like it's just common sense that if you do the same thing over and over again, you'll eventually get bored. No? lol
It is!!! I’ve seen some gameplays of a youtuber that strictly (let’s say 90% of times) does her gameplay as wants-based. And I as a viewer get so bored after some episodes because it’s just the same stuff happening over and over again for all the families. But apparently a lot of wants-based players like their playstyle to be repetitive. So a lot of people who play like don’t get bored, I would like to know how
sill don't understand how you haven't blown up in the sims community yet, you deserve it. Loved the video!
Thank you for believing in me! 💚 As for "blowing up", unfortunately, I cannot advertise on TH-cam because of political reasons. If only I could, I would have definitely promoted the Cassandra video and the one about business and maybe I would have had more subs by now. But I'm here for quality, not quantity 😉
Please please pleeeeease make a video talking about how you play and how you setup your acr too. I'm tired of play wants based only but I'm feeling a bit lost when it comes to creating my own storylines. I feel like I need some rules but not too much for me to play
Your vote was counted! 😄
I’ve always played “wants based” since I was a kid playing sims 3. I feel like these points aren’t really about want based gameplay but pleasantsims style gameplay, if that makes sense? I can understand the points about that style of LP.
I can’t believe people remove hobbies from the game lol that’s… I don’t understand at all.
Untuned acr is a menace but I like that it tries to preserve existing relationships. If a couple grows apart I’ll notice and decide what to do not acr.
I completely agree with you! For the most part I don't play wants-based and just go with the general vibes I get from the Sims I play, but sometimes I'll pay attention to them when I don't know what to do with my Sims, so I think it's a perfect balance.
I also wanna add something: I do not understand many simmers' opinions of not playing with townies and even go round and download templates that get rid of them (I kinda "blame" this on Cindy, too"). Townies are what make neighborhoods more fun and alive and are also key in avoiding inbreeding and identical-looking sims
I think people mostly get rid of townies to make Uberhoods and custom hoods (and make sure they aren't overpopulated or there aren't any Goopy GilsCarbos on another planet), but I DO hate it when townies never age and their genetics is never used. Why does Alexander's grandson date Marissa Bendett all of a sudden when she'd used to be Don's lover 80 years ago?
Additionally, I do not blame ANYTHING on Cindy and I don't want anyone to think this way. Her play style and LP were unique and sort of revolutionary at the time, even if they hadn't been given much thought. I mostly got annoyed with those who copied from her.
Some of us don't want townies because we want our Sims we create to be townies. We want to play the entire neighborhood .. This isn't that weird. This is literally how the Sims started.
@@baddynaddySo you're mad at people for playing a game the way they want to play? Why? Cindy doesn't strictly play wants play either. Literally no one does. So how can you be mad at anyone for playing the game the way they want to play?
Because I would rather create my own townies that I can actually invest in. I'm sorry but I find all the premade sims boring asf and i really don't like the majority of the lore.
I adopted the wants-based play style because it helped me not to be such a control freak making all of my Sims succeed to my standards. I enjoy it but do my own thing ... I don't have ACR but use a no-jealousy mod so if there's no official commitment, I can have poly relationships. For example in my PV Nina and Don are together but they have open relationships, they have 2 kids and only 1 of them is Don's.
I also use my own system for zodiac sign-aspiration, based on my interpretation of astrology-personality. For example Aries are pleasure and romance and I determine which will be main and which will be secondary for that particular sim.
this is the reason why i stopped playing sims 2 for a good while and got burnt out of it, despite me liking the way sims 2 does personality and little details around them ive always felt like sims 3 tried to make the sims more unique and differents in a more convincing way. the wishes are more improved and situational depending on what your character is doing alongside taking the traits and ltw systems into account. sims 2 on the other hand is limited by the aspiration type and its 50 personality of which in cas you can only use 25 to define the character.
I totally agree with you. Additionally, the necessity to use all the 25 personality points in CAS has always been killing me too. What if I want to create a misanthrope grandpa who's been living off his wife all his life but he still enjoys lecturing his children and grandchildren about life? I want him to be sloppy, shy, lazy, serious and grouchy at the same time, but I will never be able to create him this way without cheats. I can't ever create my own self in the Sims 2 CAS, because I only use around 20 personality points.
Hi Nadia! I've been watching your PV series since the beginning and have been loving it! While I don't agree with all the choices you make for the sims in your game, it does make me think about the overall storyline and what direction you may be taking it that differs from the way I would play those sims.
I really dislike wants-based gameplay too, and I think thats the reason why I deleted all of the pre-made neighbourhoods. When playing those neighbourhoods, I felt pressured to play them like everyone else because it was "lore accurate" even though I'm playing the game in my own company and not sharing it with anyone. Now I only play custom and themed neighbourhoods (currently a twilight inspired hood and also a medieval hood), which forces me to use my imagination. I often take inspiration from books, movies, tv shows, etc... to add variety and spice up the neighbourhoods if the story gets stale.
Keep doing what you're doing! Looking forward to your next Reasoned PV episode!
You can find real gems among the custom hoods pretty often, that's true. And taking inspiration from books or TV shows is something that I do as well. Thank you for watching my LP! 🧡💛🤎
I play a loose wants based playstyle - letting my sims choose what jobs they want, what skills to raise, if they go to university or not (which i really enjoy because it stops all my sims from going to university or doing all 4 years). But as for aspirations, I assign aspirations based on the sim themself (or based on the story I want for them).
As for inbreeding, I have no issue with creating sims from CAS and giving them a backstory and plopping them into my neighbourhood. I did this recently in my 50 year town where I realized I had no teenage girl sims (for some of my male sims to begin relationships with) so I created two families and gave each of them teen daughter sims and created a story for them (made them hate each other to create some more drama).
I have noticed that family sims and fortune sims get very repetitive with their gameplay. Family sims love to play chess or play video games while my fortune sims love to spend all their money!
I agree with this! I've always been a Storyteller by nature as I am an artist and thus love to draw. For Sims 2 I always loved Wants and Fears and definitely take them into account, same for ACR, but I don't want them to dictate my playstyle. If I think a Sim would be more interesting with someone else I will force that to happen for the sake of storytelling, regardless of what my Sims want. I have a certain set of pairings I really LOVE and therefore I won't as easily stray from them for example.
Despite this, I've had people tell me that they didn't understand why I forced certain pairings or events to happen, despite the fact they also often told me they enjoyed my storytelling and wished they could play more like that. Which sounds very confusing and contradicting! I don't always want my Sims to decide who they end up with, sometimes I have a story planned and the other option is way too boring as a result to me. 🙃
On top of that to avoid inbreeding (which still happens) I expand my neighborhoods. I don't like Uberhoods between the main 3 hoods because it doesn't make sense to me. But I LOVE adding the less popular hoods to them. My Veronaville has the Tricou's added into the mix, at the same time Desiderata and Riverblossom Hills got a make over to reflect Veronaville's theater style and picked sides. This way my Sims have more choices, but it fits into the main Veronaville storyline.
And for my Strangetown I often add Sims from the spinoff games. This takes a lot of time to set up. But I'm always very happy with the outcome, because they're canon to Strangetown but it also adds like 10-20 more families to the hood.
I also don't like the three main hoods together. Especially with the fact that Veronaville and its university are Europe-inspired, unlike Pleasantview and Strangetown.
I also want to play Veronaville and Strangetown and add custom sub-hoods to them, I also want to work on my custom hood which I have almost everything planned for, I just don't have enough time for all that 😭😭😭
@@baddynaddy YES! I'm glad I'm not the only one! The main 3 hoods are so unique for different reasons and combining them together just destroys the fun and believability for me.
I get how it can take some time to set up haha! It's why I kinda plan to make a basehood for my Strangetown so I do not constantly have to set it up myself (I play with PSP, GBA and DS Strangetown added into the mix). Custom hoods, I always end up abandoning sadly due to my loss of focus and lack of premades. :'D
I plan on posting some videos about my hoods eventually (thankfully backed these up), I just gotta clean up my CC first after I had to reinstall my game due to corruption. :')
Do you have any other places you share your hoods (like Discord, Tumblr, etc)?
I only have one custom hood, sadly. And it's not really properly done, I made it for my 100 baby challenge (which I gave up on 2 years ago). Additionally, it's in russian, so there's no point in sharing it. But I think I'll show it when I'll talk about my gameplay rules.
I don't have any "simmerish" social media either, I got a Reddit account this spring but they banned me the very first day. Still have no idea what I did wrong, just wrote one post on my own page and a couple of comments in The Sims 2 sub-reddit (and they got hidden immediately after I posted them, so none could see them but myself).
@@baddynaddy Ahhh that's understandable yeah! I've never done a 100 babies challenge myself. Currently playing a Grunt LEPacy challenge and that's the closest I've gotten to playing on a single family for a long period of time haha.
I usually do like playing in rounds nowadays, even though I did play whoever I wanted to for ages (that's how my Old Strangetown is super out of sync from an aging perspective haha).
That's wild? I wonder what happened there because that's such a weird thing to happen. I'm sorry to hear that.
As a writer I also like making my own familes and mixing them with the townies and pre-mades. So I will rotate the main families and also make like three or four with mix and match ages of kids. Sometimes they are inspired by TV shows I like (I made an adult Dexter from the Dexter’s lab cartoon and his sister Dee Dee for example) and sometimes I reinvent characters from my own stories and drop them in. And sometimes I just will be like ‘this neighborhood needs a queer couple with two sons” and so I just make that and mix them into the town. Its nice when Lilth and Angela have options that aren’t just Dustin and Darren. Also widens the gene pool.
Another thing I’d like to add is that the want treas are broken in some places, and many Sims players aren’t aware of that. Most notably, the ”break up with spouse” want is coded wrong, so even though it technically exists, Sims can’t roll it unless you modify the game files. I’ve seen so many people keep Daniel and Mary Sue together even after she caught him cheating, because they didn’t roll the want to break up.
Edit: Just to clarify, I don’t think it’s wrong to keep the Pleasants together, for example, if you want. But I do think it’s sad when players say that they wanted to break them up, but didn’t do it because ”they wanted to stay together”.
You're totally right! I remember seeing so many wants "existing" in the game (on different websites) and wondering why my sims have never rolled them.
I seldom ever comment on videos (it gives me major anxiety for some reason), but I just wanted to say that this video is brilliant. You went into a lot of the issues I started to notice with Wants based play, mainly in terms of the tunable Wants (resulting in repetition), and aspirations based around zodiac signs.
I have a loosely Wants based style, meaning I focus on story mainly and only factor in Wants if I 1) don't have an idea for where a particular sim's story should go, and 2) where skilling is concerned, but if I have an idea of what skills I want sims to have or where I wish for them to go career wise, that trumps Wants 100%. For example, in my current Strangetown, Tank Grunt is working towards becoming a General regardless of his Wants, because that's where I want his story to go. He's going through a character arc which wouldn't be possible if I just stuck to his Wants, instead he'd be working in politics and partying everyday.
If you're limiting yourself to Wants, your story can't really go anywhere interesting beyond adultery and illegitimate children. It even makes basic features like moving out, or even getting married impossible because the sims don't roll Wants for it. There was a post I came across a while ago where a player wanted a couple to get married because that was where they wanted the story to go, BUT these sims weren't rolling the Wants for it so they "couldn't." They were asking how they could force the Wants to appear and a lot of the comments were, "if you want to do it, just do it," but they were insistent on playing Wants based.
I have a lot of interesting storylines going on in my current Strangetown; Tank Grunt getting close to becoming General but getting cold feet; Tank's sons mostly being raised by General Buzz due to Tank being busy, and because of that they're cold-hearted and are set to cause destruction once they're older (the eldest was born extremely grouchy, which birthed this storyline), Loki Beaker has just created a mystery virus and has started spreading it across Strangetown by infecting his daughter's boyfriend, Tycho Curious is set to go down a dark path with good intentions, and it just keeps going. None of this would be possible if I stuck to Wants exclusively.
I'm unsure if I made any semblance of sense with my rambling, but the point is this video was a treat to watch. I was also nodding all the way through you talking about Pleasantview's clichés, and I also headcanon Nina as a hopeless romantic (I headcanon Ripp Grunt as such too; he's too nice to be a heartbreaker in my opinion).
Thank you for your comment 💛 I really like watching/listening/reading about what other simmers' sims are up to.
Oooo do say more about the "virus" - how do you simulate that in the game?
@NoIdleSims I use Epi's Improved Biotech Station to allow sims to create medicines and even viruses that other sims can actually consume. The two viruses that can be made are moderate (can be either food poisoning, a cold, or the flu), and strong (the mysterious disease). The mysterious disease is a vanilla game disease, but usually, only the sim making it can be the original carrier. With the Improved Biotech Station, sims can actually drink it. It can be fatal and is very contagious, which can result in an outbreak, so I think it's on brand for Loki Beaker to do something like this.
The "virus arc," so to speak, is still in its early stages, so only Tommy Ottomas is infected at the moment. The hope is that he begins spreading it, resulting in an outbreak. The purpose is to add some intrigue and stakes for a little bit. It also gives the Curious descendents something to do 😆
i generally end up ignoring a lot of wants even tho i call myself a wants-based player lol since nobody ever gets EVERYTHING they want and frankly the sims are dumb as hell!! one of my fave families is the newson family and they're like the definition of a family that needs to sacrifice wants for NEEDS lol i'll sometimes let gavin get a part time job and ginger stay home more often but i dont really like the idea of the oldest girl being the one that cares for the babies since she's still ALSO a kid so more often than not i'll force her to try to work and graduate while gavin does his part to cook and help the younger ones anyways.
fortune sims also end up just typically being the primary ones who get rich and work hard which i dont think should be the case all the time lol like wanting to get rich doesnt mean you will but if you play wants only they'll very likely all end up very successful lol or with family sims and them all constantly just wanting more and more babies, i ignore that a lot 99% of the time but for some sims like brandi i read her as a sim that just ends up with a lot of kids so i let her adopt more.
I usually base the secondary aspirations on vibes because there is absolutely no circumstance in which cass is anything but knowledge in my eyes. but I usually make don marry cass and I just play with him for a while and if i feel like he's "settled down" in my story i'll give him secondary family lol. In one playthrough cass died in childbirth and he saved her from grim so i felt that was pretty substantial enough for me to let him be a family man xD
If only we were as happy as our sims... 😩
I also feel like Brandi is supposed to have a lot of kids.
(Note: this got way longer than I anticipated but this video really inspired me to share some thoughts)
This was an interesting video! When I clicked I wasn't sure what to expect because I kind of like wants-based playstyles but you ended up saying so many things I agree with. I don't follow sims 2 let's plays as much as I used to, so I had no idea how wide-spread Pleasant Sims' inspired playstyle became but I definetely agree that the fact that so many people adopted Pleasant Sims' playstyle as some sort of a Bible gets annoying. Especially since to me the whole point of let's plays is to see different people's outcomes and decisions. But I would honestly say it's more about the problem of adopting the "Pleasant Sims playstyle" rather than about "wants-based playstyle" or rather the problem of the fact that "wants-based playstyle" became synonymous with "Pleasant Sims Playstyle". A lot of your points are really about stuff that has nothing to do with wants - you can decide to mostly focus on following the wants but not go with the zodiac-sign-based aspirations, secondary aspiration calculator or no ACR/better tuned ACR settings. But I get that the main point is about the play-style most people are referring to when they say they are "wants based".
I was similar to you when I discovered PleasantSims actually. Since I was the one who always made all my sims maximize their skills and stuff like that, Pleasant Sims' videos intrigued me as something completely different from what I was doing. That's why it's sad to hear that so many people took what felt original with her and made and turned it into the repetitive/everyone is doing it thing. Too many people saw her as inspiration that what originally felt like a breath of fresh air turned into the next repetitive thing. In my case, her let's plays were inspiration to try new things in my game and I may have got an idea from her here and there as I did become more wants-focused too but never a 100% and there but there was a large amount of stuff she did that I knew I would never like to see in my own gameplay. To me wants-based was some sort of a guideline but I always liked to do things I thought would make sense even if the sims in question didn't roll such wants or ignored the wants I though didn't fit the sim. With Peter Ottomas, for example, I tend to ignore his rare wants to woohoo/make out with multiple sims, at least until Samantha is still alive, because he is such a rare example of a romance sim that you can keep happy without making him have multiple partners, I really see him as someone who loves being romantic with the one partner he is with. And when Samantha usually dies a little bit before him and he suddenly wants a lot of lovers I interpret it as him trying to fill in the hole but no one actually comes close to his one true soulmate.
And can I just say hard agree about zodiac based aspirations and secondary aspiration calculator? I never liked this system, why should all sims of the same zodiac sign be the same? I personally tend to choose my aspiration based on so many different things - sometimes the child or in some cases even toddler sims roll wants that make me decide what aspiration they could be leaning to. For example, when one of my child sim roled a want for a new family member to join the family (I think that was the only time I saw that want in my game) I interepreted it as her wanting a sister and it was a reason for me to give her a family aspiration when she grew up. Or once, right after I newly installed Season into my game, Sharla Ottomas came home from school with pretty much every child sim in the neighbourhood so that was a sign to me that she is a popularity sim. Yet in another neighborhood, Sharla rolled so much wants to get skill points I made her a knowledge sim. I love giving the same sim different aspirations in different versions of the hoods - it keeps it really refreshing. Similarly with secondary aspirations - sometimes my sims roll a lot of wants not directly related to their aspirations and I take it as a sign of the secondary. Other times I just add an additional dimension that would fit them and there was even a situation I only gave secondary family to a sim so someone could make Grandma's comfort soup because the cycle of never-ending sickness in that family was driving me crazy. My point is I like trying new things with aspirations and secondary aspirations and it makes sims feel much more interesting.
Your let's plays sound like a lot of fun and it's sad to see that people took the "Pleasant Sims' want-based rules" so literally that they actually tell you you are playing incorrectly when the whole point of sims is that you can do whatever you want and that there are so many different possible outcomes. I'm definetely checking more of your videos out at some point because I'm always down to see something different!
Thank you for your comment! I've never really played much with the premades, but giving them different aspirations and couples in different neighborhoods is an absolute must if you don't want to repeat your own playing style. For example, I paired Kaylynn Langerak up with Chester Geike from Bluewater Village in my Reasoned Pleasantview, but one of the viewers shared how they'd seen her end up with Darren Dreamer. This made a lot of sense to me, so if I ever decide to restart my Pleasantview, I would probably go that direction.
@@baddynaddyNice! Both of these sound like very fun pairings that I've never heard of before. Kaylynn honeslty deserves so much better than Daniel or Don so it's great to hear about stories where she is happy with other Sims. This comment reminded me that I still haven't done much with her in the current Pleasantview save so I guess that's another thing to figure out what to do with in that game.
My most random recent pairing was in Fairplay (genderbent Pleasantview) where the male version of Cassandra just broke up with the female version of Don and randomly met a townie that asked her if she was interested in a blind date. Since he wanted to fall in love anyway I figured why not and the person ended up being Dora Ottomas.
I completely agree with all of your points! I think one thing I find irritating is how the wants based players go about sending their sins to college. Teens will have to rerolled the want when the get closer to age up for them to send them, and then most of them fail out for not rolling wants to gain skill points/do assignments. I prefer to have a mix of successful uni sims, some who skate by, and a few failures, that feels more realistic to me than the majority flunking out. Variety is the spice of life. I hope you keep making content like this! This video made me feel better about my decision to never use calculators or use personality based aspirations despite it being 'the cool thing to do'
All fun begins when they begin to use fears all of a sudden to make their students study again. 😵💫
12:40 iirc Gemini and Sagittarius were originally assigned to the Power aspiration before it was scrapped and replaced with the Grow Up aspiration, as seen with some of the Veronaville ancestors.
I agree so much!!! Sims 2 premade have unique storylines that are far more interesting than any other premades from the other games of the franchise. If you only play wants-based all of your sims will end up doing the same thing, it’s sooo boring.
I do agree that everybody can play the way they want, but I do think (respectfully) that want-based players are lazy and don’t have the ability to play gameplay or storytelling wise.
We're going to be cancelled because of the last paragraph 🤫
@@baddynaddy it’s okay, we have each other’s back LMAO
“This video won’t get popular” you know what, you just gained me as a subscriber. I fully agree with with this. Wants-based gameplay sounds revolutionary at first but it does get extremely boring and repetitive and it completely ruined my gameplays over time. A suggestion would to make a video sharing gameplay tips to make the gameplay less predictable and alive. Like a “recovering from wants-based gameplay” or something lol
I can already see the preview for such a title!🤕🤒 Thank you for subscribing to my channel!
You don't have to recover from wants based play. That's also kind of a messed up joke considering real addiction is very very difficult to deal with. Most wants based players simply incorporate wants as they desire with autonomy. I do it in the Sims 4 all the time. I allow whims sometimes to change the direction of their lives, but it's not the only factor I use. It's literally no one's only factor. Only people who take this super strict were ever playing that way. Even the person who played that way originally doesn't play that way 😂
@@Fizzypopization it wasn’t a joke about addiction, it was about an “illness” that plagued many people’s gameplays. One can recover from diseases too, you know.
Love this video! Personally, even though I enjoyed Pleasant Sims let's plays, her rules always seemed to strict for me in the way that make game very schematic and repetitive - especially since there are so few aspirations in the Sims 2 (secondary aspiration is mandatory for everyone in my game! :D) and the wants are very predictive. I pay attention to my sims wants, but I treat them more like suggestions/inspirations than something I have to follow. Also, I sometimes avoid fulfilling some wants (including lifetime wants) on purpose, to create some drama for sake of storytelling :D.
I used to assign aspirations basing on personality points (similarly to Marticore) and even though I think this system is much better than using just zodiac signs, after a while it also started to feel too repetitive for me and I totally gave it up. Right now I either choose aspiration myself or randomize it (randomizing stuff in general is recently my preferred way to add some diversity and chaos to my game :D).
Also - I pay A LOT attention to my sims hobbies and I also don't get why people install mod to block hobby wants (I never felt those roll too often, but maybe it's because I never did a strict wants-based gameplay). Actually, I have some sims (mostly pleasure ones, but that's not a rule) who don't even have regular job and make money only on stuff related to their one true hobby (winning dance/cooking competitions, selling their crafts/produce etc.) - and those are often my favorite sims to play!
Good way of dealing with please aspiration - work dilemma 👍🏼
I will say that at first I did play wants based because it was how I was introduced to the game. I especially liked it though because I would tend to be a perfectionist otherwise. For example in the sims 3 (my first sims game) all my sims would be perfect A students and would be excellent employees. Always went to school, always did their homework, always went to work and always reached the top of their career. And even though it got repetitive to a degree (outside of my personal story telling) it always felt wrong to me to make them fail. So when I started playing the sims 2 having sims not want to be perfect was my favorite thing and led me to allow them to be failures lol. Nowadays I still enjoy wants but I do take more into account other aspects of their life like their hobbies (I always try to pick an extra hobby for them to enjoy as well!), their interests and second aspirations and I randomize everything else (no more calculators for me). And if I have a specific story for them I’ll prioritize that instead. For example I plan to have Alexander’s first child take over as head of the family and that means he’ll have to be a “perfect” sim (go figure) according to family pressure regardless of his wants. And sometimes I’m also inspired by the wants as well! For example I had a sim that was cheated on during high school but she kept on rolling the want to fall back in love with him regardless of how many times it ever worked out! So I took that as if she was obsessed with him and would make him hers no matter what it took even as an adult lol. Overall I think people should play however they want to as I’m sure many would agree! If people want to make all their sims the same then go for it! Or if they want to play according to their own wills then go for that as well! So long as we are having fun that’s all that matters in the end. I’ll never get tired of hearing about other players sims games regardless of how they play, I just love hearing how much fun that are having!
not all wants based players play in pleasantsims style! i play wants based (and fears based) while also looking at the characters personalities. i've had 2 strangeview megahoods (one with belladonna cove added and the other with 4t2 conversions of sims 4 townies) and the experience has been wildly different each time. first time around don left cassandra at the altar but then decided to move in with nina and raise their 3 kids together in a mostly monogamish relationship. lilith ran away from home bc mary sue and daniel were beating the snot out of each other before divorcing. angela moved to university and dumped dustin and developed a harem. dustin turned his life around, became a cop, and even took in two of his siblings (beau and unborn baby broke) bc brandi kept popping out kids with lazlo curious and moved to strangetown with him. ophelia left johnny for ripp and they autonomously got engaged. wants based allows for storytelling bc the sims have that much character to them!
What you're describing here isn't really wants-based anymore, because wants to move in with someone don't exist, for example, which means you were consciously inventing your stories yourself (and good for you!). BTW, I also think Dustin is a way better "parent" for his siblings than Brandi. 😉
I always ignore the zodiac my sim is when giving them an aspiration. I just spin a wheel, you get unique sims that way. I do play with secondary aspirations too but it is also random so that I don't keep getting the same combo. I did this because I was bored with the "what aspiration each sim is supposed to have" rhetoric. Sometimes it's character based, like I always give Alexander the fortune aspiration and Lucy the family one. I don't pair them up though, since I make a Cecelia for Alexander. I also do a lot of founders playthroughs because I like playing through their story with the genetics corrected. For the sims 4 I just like making family trees, and I do a more traits based gameplay, which new sims are always randomized. The Goth family I have in a founders save is like 6 generations long to get to the starting place in the game. It's really fun.
I also wanted to make Cecelia for Alexander, but changed my mind. That red-headed Alexander was too different from the original IMHO.
This is such a needed video!!
I was definitely influenced by this play style and rules in general, and it becomes really repetitive because there are so many activities in the game that are not accounted for in the wants system. The Sims are all happy all the time because of the fulfilled wants, in real life we don't always get to do what we want right?
Aspirations being tied to zodiac signs is a neat system for randomly generated townies, but not for playable Sims. It's a bit silly to me to determine their whole life right at birth based on this 🤔
The families also become identical, nuclear mess with lots of children. I love unconventional families like the ones in Strangetown - aunt and niece, three brothers living together, mad scientists couple and their test subject, there's so much potential here! I don't see some Sims getting married or having children at all.
I am also somewhat of a storyteller and I think you shouldn't feel bad about forcing your will on the sims regarding what they do and who they end up with, or it seems more like the game is playing YOU at this point and not the other way around hahaha
I usually look at the bio (if it's a premade), personality, interests and in-game behavior to create a storyline in my head I will enjoy following! I have my own downsides though because I am sort of a control freak and I don't like unpredictable events that go out of character for my Sim 😅 That's why I don't like ACR all that much bc everyone just starts cheating left and right omg
Anyways I'd definitely love to see more content like this!
I 100% agree. While I do take wants in consideration sometimes, I mostly do it when I have no plan on what to do OR intended to do what the want suggests anyway (like having a baby etc.). Something that helps me with playing different stories is to play expansion focused (I also do this in ts3 and ts4). What I mean by that is that I look at features and mechanics I never tried before and seem interesting and try them with sims with which I think fit hem. For example I never rly tried opening an own restaurant and I have a sim that was always cooking for her family as a teen and has Culinary as the one hobby so I will try this feature with her. What happens on the way there or if the sim succeeds is open and up to my own interest to continue the story. Even a failure can be interesting and be inspiring for the storylines of the children and their goals. Sometimes I also throw in an online random occurrence generator and inspire myself on what to do. I think that playing wantsbased just like you said can water down the stories and lore of sims and makes them a shell of their aspirations as the wants will never rly reflect all the features and possibilities the game actually offers.
There's a mod that makes it so that Sims with the Hopeless Romantic Trait (from another mod, the 3t2 Traits Project) who have the Romance Aspiration won't roll wants about cheating- i really hope we can get more mods like that in the future to distinguish different flavors of the same aspiration. It would make wants-based game play wayyyyy better
What a thorough, insightful way to explain exactly how I felt playing wants based . Sometimes , I’ll do a wholesome family play through with no drama , then sometimes I play for the drama 🎭. I like chaotic gameplay at times , and that play style is too stifling and rigid . It is a game after all I don’t need rules . By the way I love your veil you pull it off well .
Thank you 😊 There are so many kinds of families and people around us: some of them are about constant fights and drama, others are quiet and don't want any drama in their lives at all (like the Dreamers, who are often called "boring" because of that). I believe it should be the same way in the game. V - variety.
P.S. the veil is actually a see-through skirt🤣
I’ve gotten back into playing Sims 2 and honestly I don’t take zodiac into account with Aspiration choosing. Heck sometimes I don’t even look at their personality! I look at each individual Sim and which Aspiration seems most “in-character” for that specific Sim to me. I tried the zodiac system before and it got really repetitive so I prefer the way I pick Aspirations now.
I don’t really play wants-based either. Again, I feel like it gets repetitive. I don’t want every single Romance Sim to have like 30 lovers or every Family Sim to have five kids… I definitely like having variety instead,
Oh and I completely agree with your thoughts on ACR! I always turn Autonomy completely off and Risky Woohoo to 0 percent if I use that mod. I mostly keep it in my game to program jealousy per Sim. That’s literally it.
I do like playing premade hoods, but I try to change up storylines when I restart them.
I feel like Sims 2 has such potential to produce diverse and fun Sims but when people have rules like this, they get super predictable and too similar. I don’t mind if people play how they want (“rules” and all), just when they try to push it onto me and how I play the game
Enjoyed the video! Glad this showed up on my recommended :)
I do the same with ACR. And use it mostly to do one night stands.
I've tried playing wants based before, but I can never stick to it. It gets boring so quickly, doing basically the same thing over and over. I have a lot more fun in any of the sims games if I just get a random idea, and do it even if I have to cheat for it.
That's what I'm currently doing with my game 👍🏼
I like the structure of playing Wants Based, but I also am not like forcing myself to ONLY do what my sim wants. Most of my sims always end up married with kids xD but I like Family play BUT that said, I play with a few rules:
1) I only lock one want slot per day. So like Monday it would be the first slot for all the sims in a household. Those are the only wants that are rolled that I can complete. If it gets completed, I lock the next one in that slot. So sometimes, I'll have engaged sims on a Wednesday but the "get married" want is not on the 3rd slot, so they don't get married until that want pops up with the day they are on. I've had it work out where people ended up cheating on each other before their wedding days and just generally making some light chaos!
2) I use the secondary aspiration calculator to calculate both primary and secondary aspirations when my sims are toddlers. I never liked the assigning based on aspiration sign because, as a Libra, I'm not romantic at all xD This way, the interests are not likely skewed yet since they JUST aged up to a toddler. I know you can't select them until they are teens, but it makes me feel more like "this is what this sim is born to do"
I don't mind some repetitive gameplay (I'm also really into farming sims and they are almost the same thing day in and out xD) but these small changes give me enough to feel like my sims are unique and also make bad desicions. Like college kids not rolling the want to do their homework, so they end up on academic probation.
I only recently found out that some people follow a very strict way of having personality determine aspiration and was surprised. I always randomize aspirations when sims grow into teens and it results in some fun and unexpected combinations. You can have a shy popularity sim who struggles with social interaction but nonetheless craves external validation. Or an outgoing, playful knowledge sim who works in the showbiz career and is dedicated to perfecting their craft. I know a lot of the aspiration-based wants seem to try to railroad sims into certain stereotypes but there's still plenty of wiggle room, especially once you add secondary aspirations (which I decide for myself but do it more based on vibes than any rigid system).
Hey, I just wanted to share my thoughts on the wants-based play style in The Sims 2. While I know it's a popular approach, I personally feel it limits creativity and storytelling after a while. I once used Pleasant Sims' Excel template, and although I started with that structure, I ended up creating my own way of playing, which I enjoy much more. Your content has been a huge influence on me, and I really love what you create! Keep it up! 😍💫
I definitely agree with this vid, this could explain why I don't tune into sims 2 let's plays anymore. I don't play the premade hoods as much, but I have noticed in my custom hood that following wants has led to boring gameplay and I ignore wants sometimes. In my experience, hobby wants do get repetitive and annoying as a result, but I do like to nurture hobbies. I do like that there are premade rules and calculators I can use so I don't have to think much about what to do or what to choose, but I understand that it does lead to more or less the same result. I am interested to see how you play your game, maybe I'll implement into my game! Also loved your outfit
I'll make a video on my play style in about 10 more videos.
Thank you for the compliment! These are ones of the very few black items in my wardrobe, I'm even wearing a skirt on my head as a veil 😅
I do a mixture of gameplay. I have certain characters that I have created and there are certain things I want to happen for storytelling, but I also add a mix of want-based playing. I tend to save a “major” want and work towards that, with a mixture of of my storytelling elements
Did you know that wants-based play started with the original Legacy Challenge. Before that, nobody really bothered. But Legacy play encouraged you to keep a tally of your sims' lifetime happiness, and grinding wants gained popularity. It is now an entrenched play style, but it wasn't always. I'm stunned that it has had the longevity it's had.
No, I didn't know that. I got on TH-cam only in 2015, I also never had any real The Sims 2 enthusiasts around me, so I was pretty much isolated from the community and learnt about the Legacy Challenge from The Sims 3 players. It's a very curious piece of history that you're talking about.🧐
I've been playing since 2006 and I follow the saying that rules are there for the breaking.
Also I'm a lazy bitch, so no spreadsheets for me. I have adapted to rotational game play but otherwise my game is pretty much the wild west compared to what I see and read online. I do fulfill wishes if I feel like it, they are interesting or they fit the story I had in mind.
Just do what feels right in the moment and don't cling to strict rules.
Btw my Brandi abandoned her kids by Skip and married Buzz Grunt to live the perfect housewife life with him.
Great video! I'd never considered some of these points, but you convinced me. Here I was wishing there were more aspirations to chose from, so I don't have the same 7 sims all the time (or 5 that I would actually chose, because pleasure and grilled cheese are the worst, precisely because they make you a slave to that wants panel!). You've put a lot of thought into this and I would love to hear you explain your alternative play style in another video. Subscribed!
I’d love to see more about your play style! I feel like pretty much everyone uses wants based (including myself) and I’d love to learn more about different ways to play the game!
I am so glad you made this video! You made me realise a lot of things about my own ‘hoods. I’d love to see a video on your play style!
I'm glad it was helpful 😌 That was one of the reasons I made it: to help some players see "the trap"
I've really liked your video! Even if I sometimes play wants based I don't do it all the time, I can force my sims to do things to direct their stories if I have something in mind prepared for them. I find it more fun! I admit I follow certain cliches, as with some romantic pairings with premades, but I try to diversify more with their descendants. For example in Veronaville I tend to add some extra families to mingle with some of the premades. Keep up the nice videos coming and thank you for breaking certain stupid "rules" certain simmers had made (they should never had been rules in the first place, only suggestions...)
I’m a wants based player for decades and you literally just answered my biggest question as to why do i keep getting bored with Sims 2 & 3, i did even bought Sims 4 and IMMEDIATELY got bored in 2 hours. I’ll try not to get lazy to create something and not being so perfectionist with my sims.
I agree with these points! I sometimes use the wants to direct my play if I don't know what to do, but I focus more on that character's story than anything. I really love the hobby system because it makes sims much more interesting. I like to try to match hobbies to sims based on their descriptions (i.e., pottery for mary-sue, gardening for john burb), but I like seeing what they come up with for their one hobby. As for assigning aspirations, sometimes I don't really have an idea for the kids when they grow up, so I will use the zodiac assignment as a jumping-off point so my town doesn't get too flooded with one aspiration type. However, if I do have an idea in mind, I try to assign them based on that character's background. For example, I usually make Alexander a fortune/knowledge sim, since he has a hidden fortune token. I also like the idea of him being kind of a spoiled brat who got doted on because of Bella's disappearance, so I kind of play him that way. I definitely prefer pairing up sims randomly when I can. Sometimes I'll pair up Cass/Darren, other times Brandi/Darren--it depends on how i'm feeling on that particular go-around. this time, a blind date put malcolm landgraab and jodie larson together, which i think is interesting--usually I put Dina with him after mortimer dies. I think that wants-based has some ideas to offer for those who are kind of lost, but I think it's more fun to figure out the depth of a given sim by exploring the whole picture, versus sticking to a rigid set of rules. Also, I am learning quickly I really need to tune ACR. Trisha and Trent were popping out babies like crazy. so much for their dream of traveling when all their money is spent on diapers.
Wants based and expanding my own storytelling is the perfect gameplay strategy for me.
OMG I never liked wants-based gameplay! Love when you dress up lol!!!
I totally agree with LPs being the latin language on TH-cam. But I still love this language, let's put it this way ☺️
Thank you for all the compliments. I'm from Russia (remember the not being able to promote my videos on TH-cam comment under the Cassandra video?). Maybe that's why I pronounced your name correctly? They say Russians are good at languages 😉
@@baddynaddy а я знала, я знала , что ты из России, привет, землячка и подруга по хобби! Я оставляла несколько комментариев на английском под разными видео, например, про мод No baby harrasment. Пересматриваю твой Reasoned Pleasantview сейчас, во время обострения болезни. Твои видео помогают мне засыпать ❤ Но, поскольку я слежу за сюжетом, на следующий день приходится находить момент, на котором я заснула =)
Рыбак рыбака видит (в данном случае слышит) издалека 😄 Я рада, что мы "встретились".😊 Конечно, были у меня знакомые, которые играли в симс, но они не фанатели от игры, как я (даже симов в бассейне ни разу не топили!!!).
Засыпаешь под мои видео - это хорошо. А то я недавно на Reddit нашла пост, которым мой подписчик пытался меня продвинуть, а кто-то в комментариях мало того, что разнёс вот это моё видео (вполне возможно, что и справедливо), так ещё и сказал, что у него "уши заболели" от моего "визглявого голоса". Вот, а теперь оказывается, что люди под меня засыпают, значит "всё не так уж плохо на сегодняшний день". Вообще, на русском у меня голос пониже (и словарный запас побольше, лол), странно, что некоторые не понимают, что голос меняется от волнения.
Поправляйся! Октябрь - не время для болезней, рано ещё.
@@baddynaddy Продолжу на русском, раз уж у нас тут образовался русскоязычный уголок =) Твой голос приятный, а главное, ты не орёшь, что очень важно для человека, пытающегося заснуть (OMG!!! IT'S TWIIIINS!). Болею я, к сожалению, очень давно, и при этом вынуждена работать полный день, поэтому играть в любимых Симс силы есть не очень часто. В такие времена спасают летсплеи, и я рада, что появился твой канал. Он действительно отличается от большинства каналов с летсплеями по двойке (ещё я люблю Marticore и Ani Bats, опять же за то, что они в своей фишке). Процитирую то, что писала в чате друзей, где мы обсуждаем Симс (правда, кроме меня, никто из них больше не играет в двойку): "Сейчас мне очень нравится серия Reasoned Pleasantview, где девушка играет, рассуждая о психологии персонажей (исходя из их био, характеров и контекста) и логике событий. Сколько я этих летсплеев по Плезантвью пересмотрела, и у всех, блин, Мортимер после женитьбы переезжает в кондо к Дине, оставляя дом Кассандре и Дону. Ну где, блин, логика? Дина не для того замуж за Мортика выходила, чтобы он свой старый зад к ней в дом перетащил, и жили они поживали на его смехотворную пенсию."
По теме видео и о том, как играю я. Во-первых, я люблю таблицы, сейчас использую электронные, а раньше вела тетради, так было всегда, с самого начала. Что сказать, я просто дата фрик и получаю от ведения учёта удовольствие. К тому же я заношу в таблицы мои мысли о персонажах, их будущем развитии, возможных сюжетах, какие-то важные мелочи, например "вместе с Брэдом играет в группе "Железная дорога", сделать маникюр, когда будет съезжать к мужу - забрать собаку". Поскольку у меня бывают очень большие перерывы в игре, эти таблицы помогают мне не терять нить. Во-вторых, опять же, сколько себя помню, я играла исключительно ротационно. Давно уже пришла к удобной для себя системе: неделя делится на 3 круга (первый - это пн и вт, второй - ср и чт, третий - пт, сб, вс). Таким образом за одну неделю я играю всеми семьями по 3 раза по очереди (надеюсь, понятно объяснила). Никогда не играю премэйдами, всегда создаю свои городки и своих персонажей. ACR нормально настроила не сразу, так что городок немного распух (сейчас в нём 20 семей, играю с 2021 года). Но теперь слежу за плодячкой построже). Стремления не делю на первое и второе - оба одинаково важны для меня в характеристике личности. Желания исполняю как раз исходя из сочетания стремлений. Например, сим со стремлениями к семье и романтике одновременно, может, и изменит благоверному разок или другой, но для этого нужны особые обстоятельства. А вот если сим одновременно романтик и удовольственник, то "все тяжкие" гарантированы =) Хобби люблю и придаю им много значения. МВЖ выбираю вручную исходя из стремлений, хобби и интересов. Первое стремление выбираю по системе Мартикор, о котором она упомянала в одном из своих видео. Для выбора второго я сделала собственный калькулятор, где учитываются первое стремление, хобби, немного интересы и совпадающие стремления родителей (например, если у обоих родителей одно из стремлений было к семье, есть большая доля вероятности, что и ребёнок его получит). Ничего себе огромный комментарий получился! А ведь рассказать есть ещё много о чём...
Ох, да, я тоже угораю по таблицам Excel, а ещё использую заметки в телефоне, но под Reasoned Pleasantview я завела отдельный блокнот. Кстати, в видео говорю про перенаселение, но сама очень люблю большие городки, всегда добавляла тауни в город, да побольше. Просто знаю, что остальные большое количество игровых симов считают проблемой.
Кстати, свой канал я как раз решила сделать англоязычным именно потому, что знаю (в том числе и по себе), что русскоязычная аудитория не интересуется премейдами так, как зарубежная, а я хотела именно сделать Новосельск более логичным, чем я его до этого видела.
Omg you're actually SO brave to have the game running in the background unattended, I fear all of my sims would burn themselves AND their entire house to the ground 😂
Actually really agree with this take as a wants-based player! I noticed things got way more interesting and less repetitive when I mixed it up with trait mods and delijume's aspiration calculators to add sub-categories to the aspirations (tweaked a bit to my liking). But before implementing those new game rules I definitely got bored! I think vanilla Sims 2 is just not built for wants-based gameplay unless it's paired with rules you come up with yourself. Adding mods like autonomous breakup/engagement and reject engagement/marriage so sims have a little more free will has spiced things up a lot more in my game too. ACR tuned properly is a must as well.
Great vid! 😊
Maxmotives cheat saved my sims in the background 😄
-I'm passing by to say that in the base game the sims are smarter and can survive like that-
I only use the wants for certain areas, like how well they do at college and even then, that also depends on how well i think they would do personally.
I've always had a lot of fun making up storylines for my sims and it would be so boring if i just listened to there wants all the time.
School and college-related wants are especially tricky. They either do not appear at all or there are too many of them. Luckily one of my subscribers provided me with a good way to deal with them: if a sim's interest in school is lower than 7, they need to roll more than 7 to do their homework/assignment.
@@baddynaddy that sounds like a really good idea. All of my Sims have been doing well in school and college so I think I might do that.
I love this video and I've already come to similar conclusions independently, especially regarding the aspirations. I never match them to the character of my sims because I find it more realistic. You can be extra shy but also aspire to build friendships, you can be family-oriented even if you are sloppy and grouchy, you can crave knowledge and also still be playful, etc. It just adds some spice and realism to the game. When it comes to the wants, I pay attention to them, but also sometimes I decide not to fulfill them all. Just like in real life, my sims aren't always able to fulfill their wants or avoid their fears (though I don't make them extra miserable on purpose). Relationship-wise, I never use any mods and I change relationships the way I want to, even if it's against what Maxis intended. For example, I mainly play in Riverblossom Hills. My custom-made adult sim befriended and married Patricia Wan. Gabe O'Mackey is married to Leod McGreggor. And they still find happiness. I also moved the Picaso family from Free Time to RH because who cares? 😂 I'm currently working on a project which I've never seen in any gameplay - the third oldest of 10 kids in Picaso family (Money aspiration, though the personality says popularity) is working on the robot-building badge to set up a restaurant which would employ just Servos. You actually inspired me to make a video about that process because the gameplays on youtube are either boring or made to test the limits of the game, rarely for actually creative reasons. ❤
I don't care about who I move in a certain neighborhood either 😂 I've always thought the Picaso family would suit Strangetown and Julien Cooke would like living in Veronaville.
Huh, really good valid points, and it really become noticeable once you point it out. It's really refreshing to see someone's unique approach and thougths!
Another aspect of wants-based playstyle are the aspiration points that are, imho, pretty much useless. The way I used to play, those tend to just pile up reaching hundreds of thousands without any meaningful application. The elixir of life can be helpful, but it does not suit rotational gameplay at all. And so by default, there isn't much incentive or reward for fulfilling difficult wants.
Still, I do pay attention to what my sims roll and treat those as "recommendations" rather than undeniable will of my sim that I must obey 😅 And as for aspiration points, I think I managed to come up with a system that incorporates them in my BACC/Legacy rules in a pretty balanced way, and I wonder if there are any other ideas on what you can do with those points 🤔
Aspiration rewards have always been a pain in the neck for me too. While the Elixir of Life is an absolute "no" to me (I guess it can be useful for different challenges tho), I'm currently thinking about replacing Don's hot tub with the Love Tub and adding an Electric Energizer on my sims' business lots as someone's recommended in the comments under my "Own a top-level business" video. But yeah, the most useful of them is easily the Money Tree. Its effect is also unlimited, so...
@@baddynaddy I wish there was a mod that added temporary buffs for aspiration points. Like the ones you get after a vacation, or simple lower decay for needs. The way I play, that woukd really be useful to minmax the hell out of it, heh
Hi love, so I think that everyone should play in the way that is fun for them, no? 😉 Wants-based play has its place, alongside playing according to a sims interests, traits, personalities and hobbies. Some people find it really fun and thats okay. I know that personally I have evolved from starting with wants-based play to moreso just taking wants into account alongside a lot of other considerations, and returning to how I used to play (before Pleasantsims ever made a video aha.)
I dont think we need to crap on creators or say that things are boring or need to die if they dont 100% appeal to you, but rather sharing what you find fun ✌🏼 like "hey I know this is popular with players, thats cool, but heres how I play and I think its fun". I've also seen people crap on players who like rules and systems and spreadsheets and say "Ew how gross and boring" instead of simply saying, "thats cool but its not for me."
I do hard agree with you on the problems playing with untuned ACR and the default Maxis chemistry system though 😅 ACR is a great mod when heavily tuned, and used with a modded chemistry system (plus maybe using the version compatible with Midge's Romantic Standards, and playing with the unlinked zodiac & personality mod).
Maybe it was sort of a click baiting title, but now I see in the comments that my video was sort of "eye-opening" for some players who'd felt their game was boring but hadn't quite put their finger on why. I'm sure that players who really enjoy playing wants-based (and don't feel pressured to do it like some commentators say) will remain faithful to this play style and we'll all be happy at the end 🌈☀️
counterpoint: I like putting Dina in the law career to give her a legally blonde moment.
That's cool then. Heather Huffington from Sim State Uni would be even more suitable for that role. With all the Barbie style, you know
@@baddynaddy I think one of the reasons I like wants based is because I just like coming up with stories based on the wants. it's fun trying to explain things like a don and mary-sue marriage that i wouldn't have paired together myself, and then I can act based off of that. there's mods that combat a lot of issues mentioned in the video as well. but tbh working towards goals and having something I can be a control freak over just itches my brain, it's a part of why i like simulation games with gameplay that can feel like "chores". i like having a little spreadsheet with info about my sims and calculators and it's not something that feels rewarding to replicate in ts3 or 4.
also you're so right. Heather Huffington is an icon but right now I'm playing a base game megahood and just don't want to add anymore unnecessary sims so I leave the uni ones relatively untouched lol.
I have been so bored with this game the last couple years, I have also adopted wants based lets plays the past couple years.. I even tried excel spread sheets because of pleasant sims... So boring! I am going to reinvent the way i play this game, like I want to have FUN! Thank you for this video! Also i would love to see simmers create their own hoods with unique story lines more often, i am soooo bored of pleasant view
Creating custom hoods is my dream 😍 Unfortunately, with the amount of work needed for that I would probably have to stop doing anything for the channel for a couple of months, which is not something I want to do. 😔
This video put something into words that I’ve been having troubles putting my finger on.
Tbh I never understood why simmers would fulfill every single want.
For example, in real life it happens all the time that people want a kid really bad, but they wait until they are financially stable to have one.
Meanwhile, simmers will let their sim families have another baby because the baby-obsessed family sim wanted it, when there is barely enough money in the bank to buy a pizza.
The second-hand anxiety, I tell ya!
PS: I thought it was really funny that you mentioned the popularity aspiration for yourself and they are the ones who roll wants about fights 😅
Well, this video received a much warmer welcome than I'd thought it would! Only one person cancelled their subscription and I think they're only 6 dislikes so far. So this isn't really a fight.😅 But your take definitely explains the channel name.
I’m glad to hear people aren’t giving you trouble for the video! It’s a really good vid
Thank you!😊
This video was super interesting! I play mostly wants-based, with ROS, tuned ACR and lots of micromanaging/storytelling. Your points definitely are making me rethink some things though. The Sims do get a bit boring when you play rotationally and have 10+ Knowledge Sims wanting to earn skills... which is where I'm at in my custom hood now. Happy belated 20th!
💚🎉
I had my husband create a website where it randomizes everything from my sims physical features, their turn offs and ons, personality points for each category, and aspirations.
I get more variety this way and it seems more realistic. In what world would a zodiac sign mean everyone has the same aspiration?
I have a mod in my game that completely disables sims' negative reactions to cheating (only when they get spotted cheating by other sims they still get negative relationship with the witness, and it only affects sims that are married), I didn't really install it to disable cheating, I needed it for my polyamorous sims but I honestly really enjoy the control it gives me. I also play with my aging completely turned off and I calculate time passage completely manually, this allows me to adjust my sims' stories and play for as long as I need to, or cut certain moments in their lives short if I so desire.
I personally go in a complete opposite direction with my gameplays, instead of letting the game play itself and letting mods and sim wants do the story telling I MUST have almost complete control over the story. I still allow the game to create plot points for me to explore, but I could never play with a mod like ACR. I treat my game like an animated book, or a movie I'm writing.
And this is not me bashing on people who play this game differently, but I wanted to share my style of playing. Maybe I should start making Sims letsplays myself with how weird my play style is lol
The more variety on TH-cam - the better! BTW, I'm going to control the premades' lifespans manually too. The original system with happy sims having the longest lives is cool, but I want some sims to pass away earlier for the sake of realism. For example, I've always pictured Dina as a heavy smoker, so she should kick the bucket earlier than Nina, no matter how happy she is.
@@baddynaddy Yeah it's kinda sad how certain game mechanics might become useless if you control the game as much, since the amount of detail in sims 2's game mechanics is like art hahah. But the sims is a sandbox, it can be played MANY ways and you can experience these little touches put in by the developers any time you desire, so changing the way you play in my opinion is exactly what the sims is all about anyways.
I really enjoyed this video and would love one about your playstyle! I agree that ACR is a little over the top. It seems to just turn everyone into cheaters which makes absolutely no sense for most family aspirarion sims. I've never had any interest in downloading it based off let's plays that use it.
Another YTer I think you would like is Matticore (hope i spelled it right) . I recently finished their legacy challenge and they assign aspirations and 2ndary aspirations based off personality (not zodiac sign) and also more so the vibe of the sim and her own mood of what she feels like playing (for example she had had two knowledge/romanace sims in a row and didn't want that combo anymore so picked fortune for the next person even though their personality didn't completely match that).
"Rules" for videos games, esp a life sim, are meant to be broken, otherwise what's the point? The primary objective is to enjoy playing your game.
Also totally agree with you re hobbies! Freetime was my favorite expansion pack. And I even reroll one true hobbies because the same type of sims get the same type of hobbies. Or I'll just straight up pick their OTH based on the story line I have in mind or the vibe the sim is giving. I had a child sim that was often autonomously catching butterflies so I gave her the nature OTH.
Yeah i remember giving up on any strict system on assigning aspirations to sims once they become teens because 1) its repetitive and 2) no matter what system i used, there are premades that inherently break those rules and are better and more interesting for it.
If premades followed the zodiac rule for example Don would be a popularity sim and not the quintessential romance sim we know him as.
I have the same feelings with wants-based gameplay for the reasons you stated. I've decided aspirations should be decided by a dice at most if i don't already have a plan for that sim. And wants i will ignore unless it works with what i see them as and they eventually start shaping into the sim i imagined with matching wants
The purpose of Aspiration is to spice up the gameplay by giving a different play style. Aspiration is mean give the sims purpose and to dictated what kind of want and fear they will have and these simple or big wants make the sims happy. Like it is a new bar you need to take care off. Also giving interesting personality trait.
So, I am curious about why Want-based play style should die.
What is also predictable is the aspiration-choosing system. They based on the astrological sign even if the personality point doesn't align with it. 12:03 13:34
14:53 Yeah, I don't like the secondary aspiration thing. It's like you can't fulfill the primary one so the secondary act like a "safety net".
Personally I like to play want based oriented, but I don´t do it that extreme lol, that´s why also always give my Sims a secondary aspiration. The secondary aspirations are always chosen by vibe, that´s it. I don´t really understand that calculator tbh. Lilith Pleasant for example got in my game a secondary pleasure aspiration bc I feel like that suits her life and past. Angela on the other hand got a secondary family aspiration (but I almost always make her and Dustin break up hihi). Dirk Dreamer for example got a knowledge secondary aspiration bc he had a secret aspiration token for that and Jennifer Burb got a secondary family aspiration bc she also got a secret aspiration token for family. With main aspirations I do orientate on the zodiac signs but I made a sheet for myself where I changed it around so that it´s actually even (meaning two zodiac signs for each aspiration). On the sheet I also added a "second best aspiration" which is for Sims that go to college where when they´re asked if they want to change their main aspiration I roll a dice and if it says yes then I change the Sims´ main asoiration to the "second best" one of the sheet.
That's an interesting way to deal with that university time pop-up.😍 I keep my sims aspirations at uni in 98% of cases, but maybe now I'll roll a dice to see if they will change it at university. I think a 15% chance should be enough.
I like wants based but I love anything that encourages me to try something different.
As well as wants based, I roll dice for lots of things too, eg I'll flip a coin when a sim ages to an adult to see if they obtain a secondary aspiration and then if they do, will roll a dice 1-5 to decide what aspiration it is.
If a sim doesn't roll for a secondary aspiration when they age into an adult i'll do another coin flip for when they age into an elder (makes me think of a midlife crisis lol).
I also use cheats to create sims with more 'extreme' personalities (the ability to add more personality points).
For things that are guaranteed to happen, for example you KNOW that a sim is going to accept a proposal if their relationship and flags are maxed, I add a certain percentage chance the interaction will fail based on their personality/aspiration. For example two family sims may have 10% chance of failing a proposal and 2 romance sims may have 60% chance of failing a proposal.
Loving the funeral attire 😂
Rolling a dice for getting a secondary aspiration at the age transitioning is a very cool idea! 👍🏼 Perhaps some sims are more one-dimensional than others.
Thank you! A skirt instead of a veil is what made the attire look complete. 😂
A very interesting video on wants based play and other things. I actually have my own neighborhood that I mostly play in. It's a Prosperity Challenge the idea being to create a number of families (by dice roll) and see how prosperous your neighborhood can become in 5 generations. According to the rules whenever a sim becomes a teen I have to roll for their aspiration and secondary asp. And I actually prefer it this way. I really don't see the point in having aspirations tied to a sims zodiac. I always felt is was too limiting. And as you pointed out, not everyone's personality matches what their zodiac says they should be. I will play wants based, but only to a point. For instance I will not keep forfilling sims wants to buy things if it's going to make them broke, or do something like quit their job when they're only at level , their wife doesn't work and they already have 3 kids! No way you're quitting your job! I will let my sims in college pick their own major and I may let a sim without a job LTW pick their own job. Also, since I roll 2 dice for their aspirations, one for the main one and one for the secondary, if I roll doubles they become grilled cheese secondary. Grilled cheese sims aren't possible the other way are they? I don't mind a little wants based play but, yes, too much of it will become too repetitive. I don't mind when people mix things up once in a while. Even if they do things in their game I'd never do it doesn't mean it's not fun to watch. One thing I've always felt about the sims is that any number of people can play the same neighborhood and come up with different outcomes. But only if they don't regiment it completely.
A pretty cool way to get grilled cheese secondary 🤔 (I think it's also available as a primary if the aspiration reward that allows to change aspiration malfunctions)
I consider my style of gameplay to be semi-wants based, but I don't do much of what you highlight in this video. You're certainly correct that playing that way strips the game of a lot of its fun randomness and the diversity that sims can showcase.
Wants, for me, are guides, as are fears. I pay attention to a sim's fears because sometimes fulfilling them is good for storytelling. I'm also very against assigning aspirations based on interests or zodiacs because of how samey it all becomes. I'm a big believer in what Jessa said many years ago... that sims tell us what their aspirations should be. I'll only use a calculator or randomizer if I'm totally stuck on what to give a sim for a secondary.
I'm always looking for how my sims' wants and fears can help inspire a story for them, but it's only a small part.
I don't do much tuning with ACR, but I don't struggle much with cheating being the story in every house. Maybe I'm micromanaging more than I realize and preventing ACR from really doing its thing. If so, I don't plan on changing that up!
All that said, I think sometimes regardless of style of gameplay you'll still end up seeing a lot of similar outcomes, and that's because I think many of us have favorite tropes for each neighborhood, some of them directly inspired by the outcomes or stories others have shared. For instance, I still to this day like Cassandra and Don together because a Simblr story I read when I was young. In most Pleasantviews that I play, their marriage happens. And that works for me because the way things play out for them still seem to be different each time in my game. Of course, if your goal with sharing content as a content creator is to entertain and create something unique, then maybe it becomes more important to be different, but I imagine a lot of the time the repetitive stories have less to do with letting ACR and wants dictate, and more with having favorite tropes or pairings. Of course, that's more based on what I've observed from Simblr, since I don't watch a lot of Sims 2 content on TH-cam precisely because I tend to hate how... uninteresting and reductive (imo) the takes are on premades from the creators I've watched. Like, I'll see similar stories from two different Simblrs and eat them up because they're somehow just more fun and engaging more with the whacky storylines that come with the Sims 2 than most of the let's plays I've seen on YT.
I'm excited now to explore what you’ve done in your game, as it sounds like you deliberately try to push outside the box for premades. Maybe I'll even be inspired by some of your stories, which is one of my favorite parts of seeing what and how others are playing and telling stories with the Sims 2.
I think one of the factors that helped me to keep it fresh with the premades is that I'd never really played them myself (of course, I'd tried to but I'd always preferred my own sims or townies) and I don't have any favourite tropes and pairings 😄
Would be great to see your play style!
ever since i've started playing historical, i stopped playing wants-based. because even if i want to, my sims struggle to fulfill their wants, or just don’t have the time to do so. because they have to provide for their family first. this leads to them being in aspiration failure and growing up badly. i do a lot to keep my sims happy, but a large household that runs a farm for a living isn’t as happy as a rich family with servants
I personally recently got bored with just wants based and playing same things over and over again. In my newest PVST hood, I basically changed half of sims aspirations and avoiding most of 'popular' pairings of the game (Except Don with everyone who walks on 2 legs and is YA and older)
Also changed some sexualities and I'm having much more fun now just with that one of many other changes that I will make.
Thanks to those changes, I got:
- Brandi not wanting to get married thanks to her serial romance secondary, but still wants babies so she had Don's (ONLY) child and currently pregnant with Herb's
- Dusting not wanting college or better career because he's pleasure, so Brokes remain poor as intended.
- Cassandra getting with Pascal Curious and joining the science lair, focusing more on science than family making. They have only Pascal's baby and one of their own
- Vidcund and Lazlo are not scientist as base game career but Natural Scientist and Paranormal respectively
- Lazlo is not knowledge, instead he's romance/pleasure as he's the playful of the bunch. I can add, he's failing it miserably, no one wants him. So he's just cringe uncle who clings to act like a teenager.
- Darren Dreamer is not used for Brandi or Cassandra to be their husband. He enjoys his painting and has fling or 2 with some townies when he gets lonely.
- When Nervous escapes, he inherits Olive's evil magic powers, so he becomes emperor of Evil and removing anyone who stands on his way, except for Circe. He's crushing on her since their evilness matches and Circe being master manipulator gets rid of Loki with Thanatos' (Nervous' new name) help.
- Lucy and Alexander NOT being together every single time. I swear, I can pair every other sim with other sims than their usual, but those 2 always find themselves together. This time I worked hard to avoid them and Lucy ended being with Blonde cashier, having quads. Toddler phase was NOT fun
- Whole Grunt family being in closet and boys getting out of it while Buzz still being very against him while trying to suppress his feelings
- Pol and Jenny just enjoying their retirement with few cats instead of children in their golden age
- Nina, instead of being secondary character for Dina and Don, became main character, focusing on her love of athletics, enjoying parties and being with just one sim as hopeless romance sim instead being female Don
- Dina stays Gold Digger and to secure her position as Goth, has Mortimer's kids who get raised by Mortimer and Butlers. She avoids them like a plague. And in few instances when she had Don's baby before marrying Mortimer, Nina is the one who raises the baby, basically adopting it so Dina avoids scandal. Later in her life, she sometimes enter Show Biz career just so she's not all the time in house drinking, making a story that she uses Goth influence to get into few commercials or short term roles so she can stay into high social status. If she ever get into another relationship, she's either with Mr Big or Malcolm Landgraab, but usually after Mortimers death, she keep Don as lover and remain single rich widow who likes to vacation on beach.
Biggest help was introducing much more townies into relationships with premades. Mary Sue is prime example, after divorce, she relaxes a bit and start focusing more on her, so getting back into pottery (per her bio) and enjoying life more. Which actually help her with career much more than being stressed all the time. Relaxed Mayor > Stressed Mayor who's hated by everyone
And funniest thing is that Sims 4 (which I disliked before I found my way of playing, rotationally) and Pleasantview remade (by AnotherPlumbob, it's majestic and deep, fulled with OG lore with something new mixed in) helped me see that doing things differently is much more fun than restarting PV every 2 months after 3rd round because everything is exactly the same.
I liked what you did with Lazlo as a character 👍🏼 And I also want to get Dina with Mr Big in the future 🤫
OMG! Your PVST sounds awesome "Lazlo is not knowledge, instead he's romance/pleasure as he's the playful of the bunch. I can add, he's failing it miserably, no one wants him. So he's just cringe uncle who clings to act like a teenager." This is my kind of Lazlo! I love that for him!! Cringe Uncle that thinks he's the next Don Lothario but is just... not. LOL
How do you play your game? Would love to know your setup and decision making process! Please and thank you :)
I will definitely make a video on my playing style now that several people have asked for it, but probably not so soon 😌
I fulfill wants if I don’t know what to do in my game, but I also try to invent my own stories. Right now I‘m playing one of my college Sims is in love with a guy who’s not that interested. I made her change her hair color and get fit to make him like her more, but they have almost no chemistry. Relationship points build so slowly. But I really want a bad relationship for a change.
yes please share your playstyle cause i 100% agree with you
Girl I’m boosting your content BECAUSE YOU ARE A ICON 😭(ignore my account name)
Thank you for the boost! 🚀 (already skyrocketing to my next "extra" video about Strangetown)
great video! i wonder what your thoughts are on playing wants based in the sims 3? btw i love your accent, where are you from? :)
I think playing wants-based in the sims 3 makes more sense because wants depend of personality traits and individual lifetime wishes. Only bookworms have wants about reading books and going to the library, for example.
As for your other question, I'm from Russia.
I must check out more of your videos!
Want based gameplay makes the town boring and overwhelming for me. Currently I'm changing how I play in TS3 and TS2, and in TS3 I'm having a blast with 5th generation. I need some inspiration to make TS2 fun again. I don't use ACR anymore, but I have no idea about what to do with some sims. Glad I found your channel!
I'm glad you did too 😉🤎