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Scholar
Original Poster
#1 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 12:01 AM Last edited by Florentzina : 21st Jun 2018 at 12:14 AM.
Default How would you interpret Sims with clashing Interests to their LTW/Career?
Clashing, Inconsistency, Miss-matched - whatever you call it.
As I'm now playing Uberhood (technically setting up making into a Victorian Fantasy world with a BACC twist), I often notice in their sims bio, their ltw/career sometime clashes with their interests.

For example:
Marcel Jocque's in Desiderata Valley. On Wikia and his Bio stats work in a Culinary Career but has no interests in food but his TOH is Nature, but wish to reach top the career of Intelligence.

As I've never played taking their interests into account before (as I don't find what they talk to interesting as I'm fast simmer and play by story-line over motives/skilling), I'm curious how other simmers deal with sims like this - whether they are custom or pre-made. Marcel's hobby shouldn't be too important as people can work and have hobbies in different areas at the same time.

A while ago, I created a thread about clashing wants but this one is focusing on - how to interpret a sim like Marcel - WHO they are and what they want in life. TBH, I've no idea what to do with him because he's characteristics is a bit all over the places.

Sure I could do "whatever I want", but I was trying to stick the maxi's story-line and don't cheat too much with Ltw/wants etc. ;-) I like to play with LTW/Career as it's focused in my BACC inspired rules, but keep debating whether to cheat this one with Bat-box or not. Generally, what career my sims can work in depends on their finance and education background.

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Link Ninja
#2 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 12:06 AM
Maybe he's just indecisive? A guy who wants to try everything but found he likes nature a bit more than other things. Or since he likes nature maybe it's not making food but acquiring natural ingredients, however those ingredients are in a place that his current government isn't on good political terms with so he joined the SCIA so he had an excuse to 'travel' there. He makes stops on his recon missions for wild truffles or exotic spices so he can bring them back and sell them to chefs.

Uh oh! My social bar is low - that's why I posted today.

Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#3 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 12:10 AM
I don't pay much mind to LTW, when I do I might set it to something that fits or make one up and write it in their bio. I change hobby and interests to fit or do it the other way around, it depends what my town needs.

So Marcel Jocque's, I would decide do I need a cook/chef or not? If I do I will encourage his interests in food up with magazine and change his hobby to cuisine. A dedicated chef should like to talk about food.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Alchemist
#4 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 12:29 AM Last edited by Sunrader : 21st Jun 2018 at 1:41 AM.
Maybe he'll get into wild foods and vegetable gardening. I usually force their LTW to comply with other factors cuz some of them are just dumb.
Scholar
Original Poster
#5 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 12:31 AM Last edited by Florentzina : 21st Jun 2018 at 12:49 AM.
I try to go by a sims characteristics and I find Interests in a Sims 2 hard to make any sense to, because they have 18 of them. Before I played with Hobby as the main factor what to do with a sims. While "Need" has always been sort of a grey area to me, but I'm not sure if that's because my mother language isn't English as it's sounds like yours sims are not allowed to do a certain thing if it's not necessary for the hood.

As for Marcel who is only an example, is eligible in both Culinary and Intelligence with my own complex rules- I class most Desiderata families as middle class living in a low populated town where Uberhood is treated as an entire Country, so if their kids want to become a lawyer, politician etc, they will have to move to a more high class area.
Instructor
#6 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 1:59 AM
I don't even think Marcel knows what he wants to do either. I blame Sophia. He puts all his needs, wants, and desires aside just for her. She has him so twisted that he doesn't know who he is anymore.

According to my rules, I'll ignore his LTW (I seriously can't be bothered) and with by his hobby. So, he would remain a cook. possibly having his own garden.



There's no drama, like Sims drama.

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Mad Poster
#7 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 5:06 AM
I have Pescado's mod that ties LTWs to interests and family LTWs. So I'd reroll him, as a premade, and get a LTW that makes sense.

Why's he in Culinary, if that's not what he wants to do? He needed a job to support his pregnant wife, then his baby? His family worked in Culinary and so he just used family connections to get the job? (I use this often if the sim has a # LTW.) There's a story in there, you just have to tease it out. His parents were total pacifists and going into Intelligence would have alienated him from his family?

Why not go into Natural Science or Oceanography? Or start a farm? His family didn't approve of scientists? Or wanted him to have a secure job instead of being self employed? He was told he was too lazy to handle a farm? Too stupid at math to be in business or sciences?

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Mad Poster
#8 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 5:11 AM
It's rare when you have a pixel whose interests, OTH and LTW all coincide with one another. So you adjust one or more of them. Or ignore the LTW as being a figment of their imagination. It's like when you were growing up, did you ever want to be a doctor? Did you become a doctor? Probably not because your life turned out differently.

That's how I view LTW's. They're just 'I could have been' ideas. Not to be confused with real life-or pixel reality.

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Theorist
#9 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 8:24 AM
I see the LTW and OTH really just as suggestions, like the game saying "Hey, if you have troubles figuring out a storyline for this particular Sim, here's something you might want to try!"

OTH is something I change a lot to coincide with my personal idea of that Sim. And at other times I treat it as something they are naturally good at, but might or might not be interested in (in addition to that the OTH comes from the dark and evil Humble era, so it's best ignored, imho)

So basically I do what I want with the Sim and the game will have to deal with it.

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Taking an extended break from Sims stuff. Might be around, might not.
Mad Poster
#10 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 8:30 AM
I think nature and cooking goes together - veggies and fruit have to be grown So in my game such a sim will garden and use his ingredients to cook. When it comes to these things, I am not too bothered, there is usually a solution that I can see, one way or another, as logical
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#11 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 12:08 PM
I guess the difference is if you see what the game gives them (hobby, chemistry, interests, LTW, etc) as an integral part of that sim as a person or something the game randomly throws at them that they have to live with, like it or not. I see it as the second so I have no qualms about helping them out by changing them.

I would totally do the homegrown fresh produce angle, I have done that before with a cafe.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Theorist
#12 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 12:54 PM
Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
I guess the difference is if you see what the game gives them (hobby, chemistry, interests, LTW, etc) as an integral part of that sim as a person or something the game randomly throws at them that they have to live with, like it or not. I see it as the second so I have no qualms about helping them out by changing them.

I would totally do the homegrown fresh produce angle, I have done that before with a cafe.


That's the crux of it all, I see it as the RNG doing RNG things (might be because I do some programming myself and so often see the "game" at work) Though I do treat it on a Sim-by-Sim basis and sometimes accept the suggestions the game gave me. Like in my Beginning neighbourhood I was pretty amused when the game decided to give Dina Caliente the LTW to become a Lawyer. My interpretation of Dina is a pretty lazy and self-indulgent gold-digger, but if I follow that LTW (which I will) she'll grow up into something else.

In general it's really good that at least in Sims 2 the game still gave us the option to follow those suggestions or not and treat those parameters in any way we wanted, allowing us to play the the game *our* way. That's why it's the best Sims game.

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Mad Poster
#13 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 1:06 PM
I think Marcel wants to cook fresh produce from his own garden/pond (hence his interest) that he attain from and open up a restaurant while working as a chef while becoming a Spie (or what that Intelligence career is all about). That's how I would interpret.

I sometimes use Interest too as an association for what duties sims take over. Paranormal for paranormal, fashion for barbers/stylist. Often that have high score takes the priority.

P.S. Sorry for my bad english.
Mad Poster
#14 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 1:51 PM
Now I have to admit that I can't remember when I last bothered to look at a sim's true OTH; never mind changing it - they will have the hobbies I decide they need to have
Alchemist
#15 Old 21st Jun 2018 at 2:29 PM
Quote: Originally posted by SneakyWingPhoenix
I think Marcel wants to cook fresh produce from his own garden/pond (hence his interest) that he attain from and open up a restaurant while working as a chef while becoming a Spie (or what that Intelligence career is all about). That's how I would interpret.

I sometimes use Interest too as an association for what duties sims take over. Paranormal for paranormal, fashion for barbers/stylist. Often that have high score takes the priority.


Yeah, could be the natural foods chef thing is a cover.
Alchemist
#16 Old 22nd Jun 2018 at 3:49 PM
Meant to post yesterday, but anyway. I rarely look at interests. I guess I am confused by them too, not so much by their number but by the number of points they're allowed to have in each one. I try to look at interests when I'm stuck and need some direction for a sim, but the points are so all over the place, it's hard for me to find it useful.

Aspiration, LTW, and hobbies are the prime directives for my sims. I try not to change OTH that much anymore and instead interpret it as something a sim might have natural ability in, like Orphalesion suggested above. I might change their LTW to fit their story, though, or choose a secondary aspiration to give them some more depth to their personality.

Bios, however, I do like to look at, though unfortunately Maxis had a tendacy to be maddingly vague. When Maxis bio and LTW/OTH don't line up, I try to come up with some kind of reasoning or story behind it (I have to say that interpretation was inspired @Charmful!), but if I can't, I come up with some other story with their bio and change the LTW to suit that.

I don't have any qualms about that cuz, as I learned when making my Premade info spreadsheet, LTWs are random and can change upon hood reset--as in when the hood loads for the first time, not a mod reset or something. So I don't trust the wiki 100% when it comes to sim info and only use it for aspiration, personality points, and skills. Everything else, I believe, can change, especially LTW. (My spreadsheet was extensive, writing down all the Maxis premades in every hood, and to do that I ran a cc free folder in windowed mode. I noticed that the info I recorded not only never matched the wiki, but it also didn't match info from my regular hood folders. Sims had different LTWs and in some hoods, the OTH wasn't static either!) So yeah, I wouldn't worry about LTWs matching and just change it.

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Undead Molten Llama
#17 Old 22nd Jun 2018 at 4:58 PM
The way I see it: LTWs and OTHs are at least linked to things in the game's coding, LTWs to aspiration (unless like me you have a mod that affects this; I have one that makes all LTWs available to all aspirations) and OTHs to personality. Sure, one might not agree with the linkages in the game's code (I don't, entirely, hence the mod), but at least links exist. Interests, though, are assigned completely randomly. Since you're very unlikely to have all three happen to coincide in an overtly logical way for any given Sim, you have to decide which is/are more important, in your own opinion, to pay attention to. Since they do have a somewhat logical basis, I'd put more "value" on LTWs and OTHs, personally. (For me in my own game, I follow LTWs, while the other things are secondary. And I don't generally spend a lot of time coming up with a story or a justification for any clashes. I guess I trust the the pixels know what they truly want. ) But in your guy's case...Yeah, I agree with Justpetro that a culinary career and a nature OTH go hand-in-hand, just as much as a cuisine OTH would -- a nature person would probably be more into healthy/organic/environmentally-friendly foods and methods while a cuisine person would probably be more like a classic, clogged-artery gourmet -- and more than a randomly-generated food interest would.

But generally speaking, if things don't "line up" in the game when it comes to career aspirations vs. interests/hobbies, there are other explanations. For instance, people can be very driven by money. So while they might very much like to be Career A, and it might be much more in line with their hobby/interests, if Career B is vastly more lucrative than Career A, they might want to be in Career B more. Or, there can be a lot of family pressure when it comes to a kid's career path. For instance, my family on my father's side (aside from my father, himself) has a VERY strong career-military tradition, to which my son succumbed. (He's in the Army.) The same sort of thing could be true in-game, if you've got a family that's lasted for multiple generations. But it doesn't have to be multiple generations, either. My own parents wanted me to be a lawyer, as they both were and then perhaps a judge/politician, as my father became, so I got a lot of "training" in my formative years and there was lots of pressure to go to law school and blah blah. Or, many parents dream of "My son, the doctor!" even if they aren't doctors themselves, and some kids decide to make that dream come true for the parents, not so much for themselves. (Though being a doctor is certainly lucrative, too. ) Also, I would argue that it's not necessarily a good idea to make one's passion (one's OTH) one's career because nothing kills that passion for something quite like having it become drudgery or having it become something that you HAVE to do as opposed to something you WANT to do. Some people do just fine with it, but others find their passion tainted. I have to say that the latter is somewhat true for me, as a person who turned their passion (music) into their career. (Nope, no law school for me, but all the "training" I got as a kid made me relish a good argument, nevertheless!) For that reason, I generally don't let my Sims go into a career that is related to their OTH. I'll often change their OTH to something else if they happen to have a career LTW for a job related to their hobby, since for my own playing LTWs trump everything else.

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Mad Poster
#18 Old 22nd Jun 2018 at 5:33 PM
What does OTH stand for?

P.S. Sorry for my bad english.
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retired moderator
#19 Old 22nd Jun 2018 at 5:41 PM
OTH= One True Hobby.

Remember that interests can change- sims can gain or lose interest in subjects by reading magazines and certain talk dialogs. An increase in one interest will decrease another.
Mad Poster
#20 Old 22nd Jun 2018 at 9:30 PM
There's one pixel in Tinsel Town whose LTW, OTH and personality line perfectly up with each other. She's an Pisces, with LTW of being at the top of the Oceanography career, and she's got the Nature OTH. She's a fish, in other words. She lives for the water.
LTW: Become Hand of Poseidon (Oceanography).
She's always wanted to go into the Oceanography career. She wants to go swimming all the time.
I'm very tempted to give into her dreams-because it's so rare to see such a perfect combination.

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
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Top Secret Researcher
#21 Old 22nd Jun 2018 at 11:45 PM
I take no notice of interests. Most of my Sims go for the same interests of sport, entertainment and culture, and the hobby of fitness. They're not all going to follow those as careers. Of course, you can have an interest in something that's not related to your work and the LTW could be the childhood dream. Some Sims achieve their LTW in my game but a lot don't.
Mad Poster
#22 Old 23rd Jun 2018 at 7:44 AM
The LTW thing - for many years, it trumped all in my game. Then I discovered that a Sim can reach perma platinum status without becoming the 32nd mad scientist in the hood. So these days, i simply put them in a variety of jobs, because that makes more sense.
Link Ninja
#23 Old 23rd Jun 2018 at 7:08 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Justpetro
The LTW thing - for many years, it trumped all in my game. Then I discovered that a Sim can reach perma platinum status without becoming the 32nd mad scientist in the hood.


What are the other ways to reach permaplat plat?

Uh oh! My social bar is low - that's why I posted today.

Theorist
#24 Old 23rd Jun 2018 at 7:13 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Charmful
What are the other ways to reach permaplat plat?


That terrible apiration score meter that came with Apartment Life (or Freetime I don't remember which) and which, without a mod to prevent it, often filled up and put my Sims into Perma-Platinum when they were still early into their adulthood.

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Taking an extended break from Sims stuff. Might be around, might not.
Link Ninja
#25 Old 23rd Jun 2018 at 7:45 PM
Never had that happen, guess all my sims are slackers at life XD

Uh oh! My social bar is low - that's why I posted today.

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