Monday 20 September 2004

Pic of the day: Nanna the lazy slob, using the Net to fill her social needs in the dark of the night.

Sims2: Winners & Losers

Not all Sims are created equal. This is more than ever true in Sims2. I have only made a few so far, but already one of them is barely viable alone, others do quite well, and a good couple seems to beat anything.

At first I made a few Sims that had personalities similar to my own. Very nice, rather serious, middle of the road active, very introverted (I resent the word "shy" which is now used, and the increased social need these people have from the original, but it is still the best I can get) and not quite average neat. Add aspirations of knowledge. This mix makes for a successful single Sim, self-reliant yet reasonably well liked, much like my adult self. Furthermore, these Sims like each other and will take very little prodding to become best friends. (I guess this supports my theory that the world would benefit from cloning me...)

Another option is starting with a married couple where both have aspirations of family. They will start racking up aspiration points already as you buy furniture, and go from gold to platinum from making food, telling jokes and paying compliments. It is almost too easy.

Platinum mood: When a Sim's aspiration level reaches Platinum, its green mood jewel changes to bright white. The Sim moves faster, becomes more productive, and has a great job performance. Basically it acts as if all the mood bars were maxed. (They are not, however. You still have to eat or sleep, or bad things happen when your need bar goes all red.) Best of all, perhaps, Platinum mood is supposed to keep your Sim young. Unless you have turned Aging Off, this is supposed to be THE way to live long and prosper. (Well, there is also a youth elixir available in limited quantity.)

***

In contrast, I also accidentally made something close to the ultimate loser. She was a single Sim with family aspirations, so you may say of course that went wrong. But while family-oriented Sims will be most energized by romance, marriage and children, they are also the masters of the social network. Making ever new friends and best friends keeps them ticking. Ideally. Unless they are sloppy, lazy, fat and choose the wrong career track, evidently.

Choosing Family aspirations does not in itself make your Sim outgoing. I had to rack up the personality points for it -- as if it's a valuable commodity or something -- and those points need to come from somewhere. In this case I took them from Neat, leaving only 1 point. This turned out to be a mistake of near Biblical proportions.

I thought I knew about sloppy (slobby?). After all, every desk at the Chaos Node is covered with a tangled mass of magazines dating back five or more years, and some of them (closest to the fridge) are decorated with crumbs. And yet I would never set my neat to less than 2, because I flush and wash my hands at the bathroom. Also I don't leave other clothes on the floor than socks, and even in the bedroom and bath they only take up a minority of the floor space. I've seen worse. I thought I had seen 1-neat-point. Boy was I wrong.

Don't read this while eating or just afterwards. I thought perhaps she wasn't that bad when she decided on her own to take a shower. And then I noticed her bladder status bar getting better and better. It took a few moments to realize what was happening... Gross!! I had not even known that was possible! Guess I have upgrade my own Neat rating. And I don't want to think about what she might have done without that one Neat point!

In all fairness, she is not just sloppy but lazy too. Hey, I wanted her to be nice, and there wasn't many places to grab points from. Here's her stats if you want the challenge:
Sloppy 1
Outgoing 8
Lazy 4
Serious 3
Nice 9
Body type: Fat.
Career: Science.

Her high outgoing wasn't much of a problem. True, it will still make you need more social contact than the "shy" type, but social is less of a problem than before. Phone calls are much more effective, the Internet is available in the night, and you can now chat during meals even with people who are not eating at all or sharing a different meal. And of course you can still chat while playing chess or watching TV. So social is not the big problem. Sloppy is, perhaps when combined with lazy. She splashes lots of water on the floor when showering (and she grows dirty at express speed even when doing normal things, probably a side effect of sloppy). When I tell her to clean up, she moans and looks at the camera with martyr face before she trudges off to do it. And while she does, her fun rating goes down at double speed. So she must spend more time than others keeping her fun bar up, even though she's so serious.

This would all be OK if she didn't mind the mess. She is a slob, right? So a little flooding on the bathroom floor never hurt anyone, and stepping over dirty dishes is part of the great human experience. If only! But she freaks out over the wet bathroom, stopping to scream and wave her arms. And she got a phobia for roaches (not without reason, as Sim Roaches carry a risk of fever).

Luckily I managed to keep her alive long enough to get her married off to Norman Vrimoen, which we met yesterday. It took the hiring of a maid and constant attention to keep her out of depression, but I succeeded. Now she is married and happy. Ironically, now that her husband is cleaning up everything by force of habit, she has taken to washing dishes on her own. But she'll never need to mop a floor again, now that she's married.
Spot the irony.