RT 1: Playing tennis today (on a really hot day no less) really makes me wish tennis was an option in the game. As someone who sometimes enjoys outdoor summer activities (e.g., bicycling, tennis, kayaking, hiking), I'd love for sims to be able to do more outdoor physical activities as well.

RT 2: Starting to think creating custom neighborhoods (got an idea for a desert one earlier today) and sims with interesting backstories are my new ways of 'playing' the game for the time being. It's sort of like spending hours downloading content, and then saying "It was really fun playing the game today".

RT 3: Realized while lot building that though I love the look of a two-story home with a foundation, I really prefer playing one-story homes that are not on a foundation. Kind of sucks when the theme of the 'hood looks better with brownstones and apartments.

I love building and looking at brownstone-type dwellings too. In TS3 I built them just to look at (replaced those ugly apartment-looking buildings that were actually one-family dwellings in Sunset Valley with them) and after apartments became available upgraded them for Townies. I think similar can be done in TS2 with AL can't it? I want to do a similar thing in TS2, get all the Townies and such moved into apartments, just need to learn how. One of my favorite things in TS3 is how all the service workers in TS3 moved into apartments after I built them.

And as much as I don't like sports I can appreciate tennis and if it was an option for my Sims I would have some of the sports-minded Sims play it.

Speaking of managing CC it's a pain in the rear to keep things clean but I found usually worth it. Put all new stuff into an isolation folder. I like putting new object meshes in their own special place and sometimes end up with quite a few sub-folders. After I check it out in-game I can easily find it again with SimCat. If it makes the cut I'll add it to a collection if it should be in one and then use SimCat to move it to a permanent location. At the end of the sorting I check the folders I stuck stuff in for orphan textures and other junk. It takes a while (temporarily moving out stuff that SimCat doesn't need to crawl through speeds it up considerably) but in the end it's time well spent. Occasionally I'll go through in-game objects looking for textures I'll never use and delete those. I've always kept my DL folder pruned to the point where my Sims game would take no longer than five minutes to load. A person can really only use about so much in their game anyway.

As I posted a couple of days ago in another thread, the next family due to be played (in my admittedly very loose rotations) in Veronaville is the Summerdreams. Only thing is I'm not at all sure what I'll do with them. The presence of the King and Queen of the Fairies in an otherwise fairly realistically played (albeit a little utopian) neighbourhood is always going to be a bit of an anomaly. In "our" Veronaville, the Capps, Montys and Summerdreams share the town and its surroundings with a host of CAS Sims and townies-made-playable. Others, while still townies, are very much part of the community. (I call it "our" Veronaville rather than "my", because my Sims must take much of the credit for what we have achieved.)

The Summerdreams' story so far in brief: Titania and Oberon married each other. (Most Veronavillians thought they were married anyway.) Puck is going steady with Hermia Capp. But on the side he has a relationship with downtown gay Romance boy David Cornton. Hermia broke off their relationship when she discovered him doing something (she won't say what) with David at her parents' wedding. But now they're back together, in part because Hermia couldn't find anyone else. I'm sure Hermia is right for Puck, and I think he knows it too, but he won't give up his affection for David (who has lots of other "boyfriends"). If they get together Puck and David soon start kissing and flirting. Puck, through his relationship with David, was actually the first playable to get involved in my game, and hence my introduction to the Maxis playables. Beyond Titania and Oberon getting married, I haven't done much with the other members of the family. Bottom has made friends with, and plays with some of the other Veronaville children. Puck now usually wears Denim shorts, but otherwise the Summerdreams invariably still wear their original Maxis outfits. And of course they still live in their magnificent palatial home. (I'm sure that be financed by taxes in Fairyland, because there's no way they could have bought it with the wages from their day jobs!)

So what will I do with them? Notionally I play one day rotations, but I haven't played the Summerdreams since 2016, so I think might spend a few days with them. (With aging off I don't have to bother about keeping families in sync with each other.) I might let Puck grow his hair, and maybe even remove his face-paint, to look more like the other local boys, but there's a danger that Hermia might interpret that as him identifying with the gay community. In fact it might be an idea to let the whole family get a bit of a makeover -- at least buy new outfits so they can look a little bit more like "normal" Veronavillians. Beyond that? I'm starting to read A Midsummer Night's Dream to see if it gives me any ideas. Not Willie Shakespeare's original, but the short version written for children by Charles and Mary Lamb in their Tales from Shakespeare (1807).

They're fairies. Why should they look or act like normal humans?

I thought this was really funny and someone might get a laugh out of it, it's not my own random thought. Source

Maxis basegame Sims 2 premade stories:Will this philanderer leave his fiance at the altar? Where has Bella Goth gone? Is she in Strangetown, an irradiated desert full of aliens? Are these people torturing the son of Death? Is this woman murdering her lovers? Will these two kids find love in a modern AU of Shakespearean lore?
EAxis premade stories by FreeTime EP:this family likes. Sport. But..... will this. CONTINUE????

Maxis really got lazy with EP hoods, they can't even be compared to Base Game ones. I understand that they were made to showcase new features, but they could've at least tried to include some good storylines.

I think for the Downtown neighborhood they really went all out. I haven't played a lot of the others to know but I do like the design of Riverblossom Hills. I've never cared too much about developers' made up stories about these Sims because if I play them they'll make their own stories that will probably completely diverge from the original anyway.

Hm. Custom foods. Why do so many of them have colors that just look bad? Like as in that's not really something anyone would want to eat. Otherwise so many scrumptious looking choices are there so my Sims are getting their menu options updated a bit.

I honestly can't remember any memorable EP hood storylines... and I play these Sims on a daily basis
They're all a little shallow to be honest. Even as far back as university. Nothing can beat the base game hoods in my opinion.

Unless you can include the Tricou's - though they have no official storyline, I just find them kinda fascinating.


In terms of how the neighbourhood looks and feels, I also really liked Riverblossom hills and downtown. I think Belladonna cove was quite interesting too - with a range of different housing from mini-mansions to trailer parks. My least favourite is Desiderata Valley, I feel like that's just pleasantview with a few nice community lots... which is kinda what Bluewater village is to me too.

The worst part of some of the EP Hood families was that they ended up making "parodies" or "homages" or whatever of some of the Pleasantview families (The Roths being the Goths....but with sunglasses! The Cordial sisters being the Pleasant Twins....but with black hair!) It just seemed so "meh" to me. Particularly because they removed everythign interesting about the original families in the parodies, and failed to give them anything interesting on their own.

Though I don't mind the Bluewater Village premades, they are kinda cool. The biggest problem with them is that I don't particularly enjoy running so many businesses.

I remember opening Desserta Valley or whatever and was like... Hmm, Jocques. I guess they're all jocks, but wait, only the mother likes sports. Fine, that's not so bad - wait, the father supposedly likes cuisine but has 0 interest in food? The daughter apparently likes sports but has 0 interest in them? I guess she's only doing it because she thinks it's healthy since she has a Fitness OTH... Then why doesn't she have Fitness enthusiasm instead? Is her mother forcing her to take up sports? Or, perhaps more likely, did EAxis themselves forget about Fitness and Sports being two different OTHs? I mean, they already left Science as Ant and Space Gazers without much else, so it's not that far of a stretch.


But Marcel is the active, fit one and Sophia's the "fat" one? They even forgot to set the fitness level flags. And yes, he does truly love food with 0 interest points in it. After all these years, I still can't believe it's Marcel's actual biography and it's probably the only reason I remember the hood at all. No, wait, I remember thinking of Violet as, "Mom dumps all of her sports memorabilia on me even though I have no interest in sports." Marcel's official bio reminds me of the Pleasantview or Veronaville love googolgons but with food.

Veronaville's Antonio Monty has: "Committed to his children, Antonio is determined to get to the bottom of his wife Hero's death. And what will be his role in the family feud that may have cost him his one true love?" Strangetown's Buck Grunt has: "More than anything else, Buck wants to be a pet stylist to the stars. He spends a lot of time wondering why his father never seems to notice him." It doesn't even have to be as dramatic; Pleasantview Calientes' bios state, "It is often said that Dina has a mind of her own, but she is quick to disagree. She likes chocolate and dreams of making it big," and "Deeply connected to her Mediterranean roots, Nina likes exercise and bread pudding." Your mileage may vary, but Dina's at least sounds witty enough, and Nina's says something about her origins and preferences.

Maybe it's specifically because they're BG sims that they felt the need to expound on those certain details since they didn't have access to the OTHs or whatnot, and sure, you can just ignore the storylines completely, but the difference just baffles me. Some of the EP premade sims' bios seemed a bit redundant since they could've been substituted for premade scenarios, interest points, and/or SWAFs. I don't know if it's just my game, but the Cordial sisters typically want to woohoo in the closet the moment I load their house. It doesn't say something to me as opposed to when I open the Curious household and find that the brothers want to meet aliens while Pascal wants to talk to Nervous in the middle of the night when he's close to giving birth, or Dustin wanting to teach Beau to talk - a want rarely, if ever, rolled by teen siblings. Even the Summerdreams are practically set-up for a wedding party, though they also seem to give the impression that they love to party anyway, and Juliette loads up on their balcony, just like the iconic scene from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Belladonna Cove kinda dispproves that, though. Sure you have the obligatory clones/homage with the Cordials--but I would argue that they are distinct enough from the Pleasant twins and have their own storyline. Unlike the Pleasants, the Cordials start off as friends and, since playable witches of opposite alignment don't inherently pick on each other, their relationship won't deteriorate unless the player purposefully intervenes. The set up for magic along with their relationship ties to others in the town give the player the option to see them as completely new characters or to see them as older versions of the Pleasants. It's player choice. The rest of the town has a varied and storied history, too--from the Newsons, who definitely don't have the typical family set up, to the Cho family, to the DeBateaus. In fact, Belladonna has a lot of broken up/single parent families now that I think about it and many of the families either have family ties or personal relationships to other households to make them interesting. Sure Chastity and Gabriel could get together but maybe he falls for Samantha first? Or do Samantha and Kimberly get caught up fighting over Armand because he's friends with and has good chemistry with the both of them? And then there's the lots--the developers clearly tried to make the city with distinctive parts, an upper class and a lower class one, with some distinctive build styles scattered in between. They also gave us a decent variety of apartments.

It's a wonder they put so much into it, too, as Belladonna was the last hood in the last full expansion. They really went all out. Compare that to say Riverblossom Hills in Seasons, and it's night and day. Riverblossom feels empty by comparison, the relations there weak and confining/lacking the room to grow. How, exactly, does a romance with Betty or Catherine help Leod grow his farm? And what, really, is there for those two old ladies to do in such a sleepy town? There's not even a country themed restaurant, scenic park with a gazebo, or a secluded ice fishing cabin, or a town hall with myshuno--and those are just some ideas using what they gave us in the EP. Think of what they coulda done with more content! If ever there was a hood in need of a mystery, Riverblossom is it.

@Sketching, I can't be 100% sure anymore because I changed my templates, but I think interests are one of the things that can change upon loading a family for the first time. While gathering info on the premades, I noticed that interests & LTWs can change when you load a fresh hood. In the new hoods I did my research in, the premades didn't have the same stats as my old hoods. And my sims never ever match the wiki in terms of LTW and interests. Hobby seems to be consistent though, so that's probably why there's a mismatch. At the time I was testing without mods, too (except for the templates, as mentioned), so at least there's a possible explanation, maybe?

I'm so happy that my post started such an interesting discussion
@PhantomKnight - I never thought about Belladonna cove like that. Whenever I do think of Belladonna, I mostly think of families like the Baldwins - who literally had no real storyline at all, other than that they were related to the towns possible cassonova... who again, didn't have his own important dramatic story. If anything, he's more fun in Meetme2theriver's Belladonna cove because he's a romance sim so he romances all the neighbourhood women, instead of just befriending them. It felt a little rigid too, with Vivian Cho and Timothy Riley - their bios pretty much force them to be together. I did like to imagine that the Cordials were like looking at the future of the Pleasant twins, and that everything between them works out in the end, I guess a possible love-triangle with Armand DeBateau could potentially ruin their relationship, but thats my own story telling, rather than what Maxis started - they only stated that they were going to become witches. Which is kinda a "meh" storyline in my opinion.

I think hobbies are supposed to be tied to their star signs but the other day I discovered an Aries with cuisine as hers, which was a pleasant surprise (who knows, maybe I have a mod that shakes things up but I don't think so) because she had some decent cooking skill and I wanted her to be able to make cheesecake so she can have twins. She was originally a clerk at a community lot.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't premades' interests set and their LTWs and turn-ons randomized when you first load them up? I pulled up the untouched EAxis BG and Belladonna hoods from my files and loaded them up in a modless folder only to have the same interest points (and OTHs, both of which match the ones on the wiki) but randomized chemistry and LTWs every time. The BG sims' interests seem to have been purposefully arranged too; Angela and Lilith mainly have opposing interests from the get-go, presumably as one of the causes of their poor relationship, and the Goths and Curious brothers don't have any interest in fashion whatsoever. I'm not sure what could be causing the difference, though I played my old BG-only megahood without FT and continued it with mods to prevent the interest-enthusiasm bleed, which rendered most of the premades' interests static, barring some age-up changes.


OTHs are generally tied to personality, which tends to be related to their star signs. Several of my game-created NPCs don't actually have personalities that match the zodiac template, however, so that made for some surprises when they were moved in. I don't particularly agree with the OTH-personality system since it's a bit restrictive to me, so I often either decide or randomize them. The wiki says OTHs are also connected to interest points, but I haven't noticed that myself.

Edit:

Bigsimsfan12, maybe it's just me, but the BG hoods had some interesting weaving storylines, whereas many of the EP hoods, such as in the Riley-Cho storyline, were a bit contained or didn't give much characterization clues, probably due to the lack of set-ups that the BG hoods had. I'll admit that Pleasantview is my least-played BG hood but the love googolgon can be amusing to me, and the fact that you can try to manipulate the set-up depending on which household you play first was kind of fun. You can do the same with the other hoods, but since EAxis didn't provide as much to play with, you'll have to supply more of the drama yourself. I can see it being a draw for people who'd rather not have set storylines, though I'm the type who plays custom sims if I want my own story from scratch, so I prefer premade sims to have a bit more substance to them.

I haven't played Belladonna in a while, but I have the Cordials in my BG-only megahood (or rather, my friend plopped them and their house into the lot bin and I dropped them into my hood because I didn't know better back then). The Belladonna storyline that sticks in my mind the most, however, is Jessica Peterson. She has memories of her parents dying but they're not especially strong, and she grew up into a Fortune sim with a hidden Romance token and numerous skills yet begins the game stuck in a trailer park with a low-end job and horrible reputation, recently divorced from one of the most affluent sims in the city on the basis of not wanting a child. She also cheated on him with a mystery sim, yet she's close to becoming friends with her former step-daughter anyway. For some reason, it just pinged to me as one of the more interesting EP storylines.

The OTH is one thing I completely ignore.

Sims have more than one hobby in my game, depending on how much time they have on their hands, and if they don't have one, I will choose one for them

I like the pre-destined hobby and use it to help determine a Sim's life but that doesn't mean that's the only thing they do. I'm working on a way to build up my neighborhood that will rely heavily on that portion of the game, sort of a mix-up between a number of challenges and their hobbies will help determine how the city progresses, but not all together since some things since I'm varying the requirements to make sense for the building or career. I don't like to plan out too much in advance as I play and have always enjoyed the variety bringing in various NPCs adds. Normally left to my own devices I'll get into a rut.

I have this saved in my notes, I believe it was from an old post on here.

I've had plenty of sims with natural talent in Film and Literature and Fitness. Candy Hart of Widespot is Film & Literature. Gunnar Roque, Dora Ottomas, and Sharla Ottomas are all Fitness. That's off the top of my head. I know I've had others.

As a side note - it's not specifically their zodiac but more their personality points (e.g. Gemini, Scorpio & Sagittarius have 7+ active points - which is why they're usually sports enthusiasts). Not sure if someones mentioned that.
A little girl in my game had a fitness OTH - she's the offspring of Breanna Custer and Dorian Kauker so I'm guessing she has quite a high playful (and possibly active) personality, but I'm not entirely sure.

Bigsimfan12 that's interesting. I haven't played enough since FreeTime was new to discover as much as I might have. I know a lot of people don't like FT but I really enjoy it because it gives the pixel people a little more depth that otherwise I have to decide for them, and I decide more than enough of their lives as it is already. And it finally gave them something to do while they were at University, which to my mind was sorely lacking. I mean shoot, I can rush a Sim through Uni in just a few days with no problem at all. Last time I played a group through they came out with a lot of skills on top of their fairly useless degrees.

Today I remembered Delphy's Download Organizer was a thing and grabbed the updated version and installed it. It's too bad it thinks roughly half my files are orphans, otherwise it might actually be useful.

I've seen a few Film & Literature hobbies - including the elderly male socialite whose name currently escapes me.

Re: Hobbies vs Zodiac, Film/Fitness, etc

I was curious about the distribution of these things in the vanilla game. These are my townies and NPCs from an unplayed vanilla PV straight from the installation template. I added Aspiration to this because I remember having this discussion before, too, that they are tied together, and thought it'd be interesting for people to see if they haven't already. You can see that the Zodiac/Aspiration tie is consistent, but the hobbies vary (though there do seem to be some common ones), and there are fitness and film sims.

PDF

I've seen a lot of fitness OTH, but I think I've ever seen film and literature. I don't really give the hobbies any mind, so maybe there are. I just don't remember the pop-ups from the OTH notification.

My Holly Boyle (former dormie) is Film & Lit, and my Xania Agnarsson (born in game) is Fitness. I like the hobbies for the same reason as Misty--it gives them more depth. I also think it lets them make more friends. Quinn and Nicole may have never become close if not for their shared love of the soccer goal in the schoolyard, and Olivia and Theresa could always talk about the video games they both played.

Struggling to find any film & lit OTH Sims in my game...
Colton Baldwin is Fitness though. Personality is: 8/8/8/8/3.
Another fitness. Storm Powers 1/9/7/6/3.

Will update this post if I find any