Fears vs. Autonomy, plus general W&F feedback [ Edited ]

[sirdayne]

Fear of Unfulfilled Dreams

This fear in particular is super annoying because it's designed to punish the player for not fulfilling a Want.

Maybe you are just busy managing multiple Sims? Why isn't autonomy handling their Wants? Logically, if the Sims have Full autonomy and Want to do something why wouldn't they do it on their own?

What's weird is I actually saw a loading screen that said "Wants are things your Sim wants to do, but you don't have to."

Categorically, this is untrue. Instead of removing the loading screen, they changed it to this. The problem is Fear of Unfulfilled Dreams will punish for not actively micromanaging Wants. You get +2 Sad and +5 Angry moodlets from it. Mind you if the Angry moodlet is only one active it is Very Angry state and could lead to death from Anger depending on the Sim.

Furthermore, the Discuss Fears option is not prioritized in the Social menus after fulfilling a Want! I have to pause the game, Click "More Options", "Friendly", More Options 4-5 times and only then can I find the option to Discuss Fears !!!

Fear of Dead End Job

This one pops up way too frequently. I've seen it pop up right after a Sim was promoted. Autonomy for Regain Passion should be added for 1 hour before work. I can't always be checking back on every Sim that has this Fear.

These are the two major sticking points and feedback I have for the Fears system.

Wants Feedback

• Wants do not take into consideration existing factors of household. Being "Family Oriented" asks "Have a child" when one is already present in the family.
• Too many music related Wants, not enough Trait based
• Where are situation based wants in the household? I've only seen these pop up for low needs. If the dishwasher has broken down, why isn't there an associated Want to Repair it if the Sim has enough Handiness skill?

I am aware of the Fear Banisher and Wants Refresher potions in the Rewards Store. However, as a player that was playing with Whims a few weeks before the W&F system dropped, I can tell you I was having more fun with Whims because it was less micromanaging. The current W&F system needs improvement.

I should not be wanting to go get a Fear Banisher everytime the Fears for Unfulfilled Dreams and Dead End Job are popping up.

[xochiquetzl_xkvn]

Yeah, I have a lesbian couple who are hounding me to Try for Baby when they have a baby RIGHT NOW. (Also I would have to edit one of them to be able to impregnate the other for them to fulfill that.) Also one of them has the Bestselling Author aspiration and is level 10 in writing and a couple thousand in royalties from completing it and has the Want "Practice Writing."

Here she is wanting to Practice Writing with her confident buff from writing a Bestseller.

Don't even get me started on every Sim coming home tense from "dead end job" right after getting promoted. It's idiotic!

I had two separate Whim Overhaul mods (MissyHissy and Bienchen) and was having a lot more fun with those. I might need to install their updates for Wants.

[EvilVampyre]

This system really annoys me too.  The dead end job fear was driving me up the wall, my sim had it all the time.  My sim got promoted, he'd come home with this fear, I'd get rid of it the next day, and then he'd come home with it again.  I also had a sim that started a fire and was given the fear of fire.  Every time he cooked, he started a fire, he'd extinguish the fire and the fear was still there.  Next time he cooked, he started a fire, extinguished it, and still had the fear.  What was I supposed to do!?  All of this got so annoying, I turned the system off.  Everything was fine again, until the last update.  Now, every time I travel or load the game, the system has been turned back on.  I have to go into the options, turn it on, then off again and apply the changes.  No game has ever annoyed me as much as this one since the last expansion!

[Slytherclaw72]

Honestly, the wants and fears system has done more to kill my enjoyment of this game than any of the bugs I've had to deal with over the years (including a bug that turned my favorite married couple into brothers and caused a lot of unnecessary drama for me).

Whims were pretty much perfect for my gameplay, because I didn't have to worry about them. If they got fulfilled my sim got a bonus, if not, no harm no foul. I didn't feel like I was being bullied into playing what the game wanted me to and punished for playing what I want (No, I don't want my sim to go hang out with this rando we met once on the street; no I don't want my sim to get a new job after I specifically sent him to Uni to get this one, etc.).

The fact you have to waste satisfaction points to get rid of these unwanted 'wants' is just adding insult to injury.

[xochiquetzl_xkvn]

I hope these are retuned, but right now I'm modding Wants with the updated version of one of my previous whim overhaul mods (the other threw last exceptions, alas) because the Wants I'm getting are universally idiotic.

As for Fears, I'm using UI Cheats to remove them.

Game: It's almost as if someone is controlling her life. Will Ruth finally fulfill her dreams or will whoever is controlling her life stop her wishes from coming true?

Me: I will LITERALLY kill you in your sleep!

Me: *uses UI cheats to remove the fear and the tense moodlet*

It's a six person household. Ruth isn't aging up this week. She can wait while I make sure her siblings who are aging up have all their childhood aspirations or character values in order!

I gave it my best shot vanilla, but frankly, my Sim coming home in a snit every day because their job had the utter temerity to promote them is UNPLAYABLE.

[daikoyu]

Wants & Fear are now the new lifestyle (Snowy Escape). You get punish if you don’t play the game so as the development have in mind, especially if you don’t toggle it off, how lucky we are that this feature is now buggy, and all players need now to play with this *awesome* system or just don’t play the game at all.

They just needed more whims (specially DLC-Whims), make it so that whims make sense for your active household, and remove all whims which want to buy things. The whole system was good but needed tweaking. Now we have a new system which is clearly not tested or only tested whit a specific player in mind.

I really think the crowd which always cry for more sims 2 deep & consequence will destroy this game for me and other player which don’t want a system which punish player. I bought this game because it wasn’t sims2, now I get the poorer sims 2.

[xochiquetzl_xkvn]

“Depth and consequences” does NOT mean “punish the player if they don’t go into CAS.fulleditmode to edit their lesbian couple so they can Try for Baby until their household has no available slots left.” Especially with Wants that are so incredibly generic! 

The Try for Baby whim/want is particularly annoying to me because as a whim it would happen to third trimester pregnant Sims, Sims with the “overjoyed to hear about a new family member”/pregnant partner moodlet, Sims with triplets in bassinets, same sex couples… I see you didn’t fix the whim, just changed the name  to want and made it so I can’t dismiss it or turn the system off (bug).

All elders get fear of death. All working Sims get fear of dead end job. How is this depth? It’s generic! 

I actively dislike systems that are overbearing. I can come up with my own gameplay ideas and don’t need the game to spoon-feed me stupid ones and then punish me for not following them! 

[Edited to add] Okay, I'm done. I'm now experimenting with NTFS file permissions to see if I can prevent the game from writing to Options.ini and seeing if that can prevent this woooooooonderful feature from turning back on constantly.

[edit again] Nope.

If I turn off Wants and Fears and set options.ini to read only, the file is written to anyway when the lot reloads and wants and fears are re-enabled.

If I use an administrator account to demote my account to user and give myself an explicit deny on writing to the file, the line whimsystem = 0 at the bottom remains but wants and fears are turned on when loading the lot.

[Woogoo336]

Yeah this system was not well thought out. Most of the fears don't even make sense contextually. Worse is that they are often difficult to get rid of and happen constantly. One of my sims constantly has the "afraid of the dark" moodlet but doesn't have the trait that goes with it so it's impossible to resolve.

Another disturbing thing I found is when making an NPC sim selectable via a mod, they are also packed with fears. This is a sim that YOU CAN'T CONTROL building fears which affect their mood and behavior with absolutely no hope of resolving them without mods. But even using mods would be a massive amount of work.

There needs to be a checkbox just to disable fears and remove fears from all sims in the world while keeping whims active. Also, fears should only happen to the household you are playing and every sim not in the family you are playing at the moment should be immune to fears and unaffected by them if they are in a household you've played.

[daikoyu]

Yeah, this makes this system especially bad. I saw posts on reddit that pets got fears too. As I tested this system almost all my unplayed elders got the fear of dead if they would spawn as visit/walk by. I think it gets removed if you toggle it off, but this is not a solution for player which want to play whit whims/wants. NPC/Pets should not development any fears, never!