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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 27th Jul 2018 at 7:20 PM
Default How do you handle Aspiration and personality variation in your game?
The other day, I was curious about the Aspiration and zodiac sign distribution of the population in my main neighborhood. So I created a list using SimPE and discovered that I have a lot more Fortune Sims than I expected and too few Knowledge and Romance Sims. And personality-wise, it feels like every other Sim is an Aries or Scorpio, lol.

So when my oldest Teen Sims left for college this past rotation and I was creating their dorm-mates, I tried to create Sims who had Aspirations and zodiac signs in the areas where I was lacking–Knowledge and Romance for Aspiration and Cancer, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces for zodiac sign. I found it interesting that the zodiac signs my population lacks the most tend to be the more balanced / less extreme signs. No wonder I have so many Grouchy Teens stealing my Sims’ newspapers every day and so many Outgoing Sims finger-gunning everyone as they walk by!

In trying to fill in the gaps with these new Young Adult Sims, I’m trying to achieve a more balanced neighborhood in terms of Aspiration and personality type. It’s the first time that I’m consciously making an effort to instill more variation in my neighborhood. Why? Because to me, variation makes the game more fun and more realistic. As much as I love Fortune Sims who are dead-set on achieving their goals no matter what, I need more Romance Sims who have no qualms about tempting married Sims or Family Sims who don’t care about their careers.

Has anyone else done something similar? Or if you haven’t, do you subconsciously tend to create / play specific types of Sims? Do you prefer certain Aspirations or personality types and make an effort to have them show up in your game, or do you just go with what your born in-game Sims have?
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Forum Resident
#2 Old 27th Jul 2018 at 7:55 PM
Yeah, I've definitely done that! I realised that I was deliberately steering clear of extreme personalities when I created sims. I was always giving my sims a balance of points which informs their zodiac signs, and since Family sims want kids, I was making a lot of those for my beginning hoods.

To correct this, I started to focus on who I wanted each sim to be. I realised that I'd been making a lot of standard looking sims that all seemed 'nice', so I gave them nice or neutral personalities. Once I started to think about character, I started making sims that <looked> more interesting, and dressing them accordingly. Then I'd think, this sim is complex. Sure they're neat - but they don't also have to be nice, and playful. Maybe they're super serious, or maybe their super aggressive. I started to play with more unusual (for me) combinations of personalities, and making sims who are messy, outgoing, and serious, or playful, mean and tidy.

I started to experiment with giving sims 0 points in certain categories as well. Inspired by Nervous Subject, I started to make more extreme personalities that I would balance with other traits: maybe max out kindness and put 0 points in playfulness (so an awesome teacher: strict but kind.) or max out outgoing but put 0 points in kindness, and have a mean bully. The extremeness makes gameplay fascinating because you never know whether that mean sim is going to fall in love and heartfart or fight every sim in the hood and end up alone. You really can't tell - and sometimes it's awesome to watch them work it out.

Townies helped too, because as they bred with my sims, the children had a wider array of personality options. I don't pay too much attention to zodiac signs (I'm a real life fan of astrology and the in-game zodiac designations aren't remotely accurate lol) but I did start to notice a greater variation there as well.
Mad Poster
#3 Old 27th Jul 2018 at 7:57 PM
I don't create new CAS sims usually, and I randomly roll for teens aspirations, and move townies in based mainly on chemistry. So I think I probably have a good balance, although right at the moment I have only one sim who has family as their primary aspiration.
Alchemist
#4 Old 27th Jul 2018 at 8:03 PM
I have not paid much mind to sim's zodiac signs.

when I assign Aspirations in Create-A-Sim or in transition from Child to Teen, the decision is based often on personality.
Neat:: Family
Outgoing:: Popularity
Playful:: Fortune
Active+Serious:: Knowledge
Outgoing+Playful:: Romance or Pleasure
Mad Poster
#5 Old 27th Jul 2018 at 8:14 PM
I have this problem of having too many popularity/fortune types in Tinsel Town-however, I made it this way deliberately-because in the career they're in people need a lot of ambition and personality to make a success of it-show business.

Their offspring, though, are not quite as rigid in their personalities. I have a male Cancer who is overactive, very shy, very playful and extremely nice. 'Normal' of this sign is 4 or 5 in each personality point. He's taken it to extremes.He also has sports as his hobby. According to Sim Lore, Cancers are usually tinkering fiends.

Then there's Terrence Snyder, who's a Virgo, lazier than anyone has the right to be, a 10 in both neatness and niceness but extremely serious. He likes Cuisine as a hobby.

The founders were mainly interested in Music & Dance. Their children are mostly interested in sports and fitness. Tinsel Town will change in it's direction with the second generation as they grow into their lifestyles of the rich and jogging..

The culture wars haven't started yet..

Receptacle Refugee & Resident Polar Bear
"Get out of my way, young'un, I'm a ninja!"
Grave Matters: The funeral podium is available here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/e6tj...albits.zip/file
My other downloads are here: https://app.mediafire.com/myfiles
Scholar
#6 Old 27th Jul 2018 at 9:29 PM
I find CAS has a couple of zodiac signs it really likes and rarely gives me anything else, so on the rare occasions I create Sims I roll dice to determine their personalities, then assign an aspiration suitable to the rolled personality.

In-game, I usually assign aspiration based on personality:

Nice with Neat and/or Shy - Family
Neat and Serious - Knowledge
Outgoing and Active - Fortune
Lazy and Playful - Pleasure
Nice and Outgoing - Popularity
Grouchy or Lazy and Outgoing - Romance (which would make no sense in RL, but Romance Sims seem to be totally selfish and more interested in conquests than in actual romance)

It's not a hard-and-fast rule because not all Sims a perfect fit for any aspiration, so I've had the odd messy Knowledge Sim, active Pleasure Sim, etc, usually based on the kinds of wants they rolled as a child. Some Sims are so middle-of-the-road that they're almost impossible to assign, in which case I tend to favour Fortune or Popularity, or sometimes Family for female Sims if the hood requires lots of babies (they may as well be happy about it!).

I have a fairly good balance of most aspirations, but Romance Sims tend to be underrepresented in my hoods. For many years, I didn't allow them at all; these days I allow them, but I only assign the aspiration if the Sim is a perfect fit, so they're still in short supply. I usually play to wants, but just have no interest in Romance wants - I know there are other ways to keep them Platinum, and that's how I play them, but I still feel I'm being unfair to a Sim if I assign them an aspiration whose main wants I'm going to ignore.
Test Subject
#7 Old 27th Jul 2018 at 11:47 PM
I assign aspiration based on zodiac sign:

Aquarius - Family
Aries - Popularity
Cancer - Family
Capricorn - Fortune
Gemini - Fortune
Leo - Popularity
Libra - Romance or Pleasure
Pisces - Knowledge
Sagittarius - Knowledge
Scorpio - Fortune
Taurus - Pleasure or Romance
Virgo - Knowledge

These are the same that the game typically assigns for townies, and the personalities fit. I just go by this rule and I never have a problem with distribution.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#8 Old 28th Jul 2018 at 12:02 AM
I look at what the sim rolled as a kid, then at personality and simply decide on again to teen what they will aspire to be. Very nice sims I tend to set as family, very serious ones are often knowledge, playful ones as Pleasure, and very outgoing ones as popularity, but not always. Some I might possibly change on becoming adults. The only aspiration I have very few of is romance, I use all the other aspirations equally. I look at motivation level, interests, hobbies and personality when deciding career paths.

I often set zodiac sign to help couples have more chemistry but I don't link it to personality. if I am making sims in CAS I would set the personality what I thought they would be without bothering what zodiac it is, then once on a lot I would set the zodiac sign to whatever it needed to be to give the couple decent chemistry. I always make married couples to start with, very occasionally siblings. I find the whole linking between zodiac and personality to be rather annoying so I take no notice of it. I could end up with a very playful Scorpio or a very messy Virgo.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#9 Old 28th Jul 2018 at 1:20 AM
I don't like assigning aspiration based on personality, I think it's actually really interesting when I get, say, a shy popularity or romance sim or a serious pleasure sim or a playful fortune or knowledge sim. These combinations make me flesh them out as people more rather than slotting them into a stereotype.
Mad Poster
#10 Old 28th Jul 2018 at 1:56 AM
I have OCD so I have to count to determine aspiration and personality points. It actually makes for a well-rounded hood. Yay for OCD, I guess.

"Fear not little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you a kingdom". Luke 12:32 Chris Hatch's family friendly files archived on SFS: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=603534 . Bulbizarre's website: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C...CoveredPortals/
Mad Poster
#11 Old 28th Jul 2018 at 3:40 PM
I know there's supposed to be a link between personality and zodiac, but I just had a plantsim spawn twins with the same personality and different zodiacs.

In some neighborhoods I assess the wants and fears of the child and their personality and relationships with others to determine aspiration--your only bff is your big sister the romance sim? You've brought home and wanted to be friends with eleven kids, all of the opposite sex? You're a Romance sim.

In others I roll the six-sided dice.

Pics from my game: Sunbee's Simblr Sunbee's Livejournal
"English is a marvelous edged weapon if you know how to wield it." C.J. Cherryh
Mad Poster
#12 Old 28th Jul 2018 at 5:09 PM Last edited by Peni Griffin : 29th Jul 2018 at 4:34 PM.
When I started Drama Acres and created Widespot, I started from the point of wanting one core unit for each aspiration. In Drama Acres, this unit was an individual sim; in Widespot it was a household. But it would be boring and artificial to create entire households that were all one aspiration, especially since some of them would logically be larger than others.

In Drama Acres I named the six core sims, derived as many punny or allusive names as I could using each of the six surnames, and built households accordingly. So Sadie Hawkins the Romance sim got a large family, and Eppie Curian the Pleasure sim got a small one. Because the Hawkins family was so much larger than any of the others, it made sense to make Sadie's parents Family sims. Because the only names I could think of to go with Curian were Pierre and Marie, her parents were obviously Knowledge sims. I had made the core sims individually, tailoring their personality points to my understanding of what sims with certain aspirations would be like.Single parents were similarly crafted to match their names. Reasoning that the chemistry system I was familiar with from Sims 1 had probably been retained, I gave full sets of parents "matching" zodiac signs. And so on. When I felt the need to make a new CAS family, it was generally for a Reason that gave me a clear vision of what the family would be like and the decisions were simple ones. And I've never had a problem with too many, too similar sims in Drama Acres.

In Widespot, I had to design each household's members based on the roles they had to play in the neighborhood storyline, which I crafted in broad strokes before I ever opened the game. When I did open the game, I made the lots first, which gave me plenty of time to think about the individuals making up each household, so when I sat down to CAS I was able to individually tailor personalities, based on the requirements in the story. I understood Sims 2 chemistry pretty well by then, and since the starting storyline centers on Baby Musical Chairs, I'd made notes about the personality types that create the most reasonable ground for the story, and all the adults and most of the elders were built on those principles. The younger sims were mostly names (though Woody springs from a notion that it would be more fun for the virgin hermit to have two children than one, and for one of these to be Romance) and for the most part got the personality spreads CAS gave them when I rolled the pacifier. I chose teen aspirations based partly on the dim view I had at that point about family dynamics, partly on a desire to shake up stereotypes. So the female, lazy, playful Land teen is Fortune (somebody has to worry about money in that house!) and her brother is the one who wants to settle down and have babies ASAP. Goldie makes a much better fish-out-of-water as a Popularity sim rather than a Romance one, and Virginia became Popularity due to grandmotherly pressure - she isn't all that outgoing. The children are blank slates for the player.

From these beginnings, variety has never been a problem for me. Most children tell me what aspiration they are, and if they don't, I have dice, contingent circumstances, and an overall sense of whether any one aspiration is over- or under-represented in their age cohort. If I make townies, I can either roll a 12-sider for Zodiac sign and a six-sider for aspiration, or make one sim per sign with two of each aspiration. Any randomized method will result in statistical clusters eventually, though, so if I don't like a roll I don't take it.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Mad Poster
#13 Old 29th Jul 2018 at 4:26 PM
Peni - you are my inspiration, love your Sims! When I make (or adjust) a sim, I also adjust interests. I sometimes adjust sims personality to be extreme, like a mad scientist who has max clean points, but NOTHING else! Interestingly, I discovered that the children of extreme parents (like zero nice) will have the opposite trait (total nice)..

Stand up, speak out. Just not to me..
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