@Sunbee -I quite using AVG for virus "protection" after it wouldn't let me back my files up or compress them.It's time you find another virus protection program to replace AVG with like I had to at least a few years ago.

My biggest peeve recently was not being able to even load my game with a hard drvie defragmenting program running and working on my hard drive for over 24 hours even with breaks to hibernate my computer during that time.

Shiny new pet peeve brought to you by Cyd Roseland's snorkle, jewellery set for swimwear that also shows up when a Sim is naked. I set the snorkle for swimwear so Cyd can wear it when swimming, but it also shows up when he has a bath... and when he woohoos. It's amusing for now, but I know it's gonna annoy me eventually. I dunno if downloading an accessory vesrion and setting it for swimwear only would work, I suspect it also needs to be set for everyday.

The thought of Cyd woohooing with a snorkel cracked me up

A recent pet peeve of mine, I don't know if it's been mentioned before, but when a ghost haunts the bath with the curtain it stays closed. Because of this, sims literally go through it just to shower and bathe. Don't know if there's a fix or anything, but this is a minor annoyance.

On the other hand, this one baffles me and has no doubt been mentioned, I assume. Blue fangs on male vampire adults. I resurrected the Tricous for my Pleasantview and for the first time, I decided to make them vampires as I don't usually do that. I keep them human normally. Everyone was fine with the exception of Kiernan and Kvornan, who had blue fangs. I looked it up and noticed that it was a common issue and that Cyjon had made fix for it. I installed it (Version 3, the recommended one) and loaded the game. Kiernan had been fixed, but Kvornan hadn't, which was odd.

I'll just live with this awkward, blue fanged guy, but doesn't mean that it won't be a pet peeve of mine.

My Hobbs family was getting annoyed at their job shifts running until so late at night they ended up deciding to switch jobs and take on something with an earlier shift so they wouldn't be staying up so late at night.

I am frustrated by the bin families. In future, I will look properly into the clean neighbourhood templates in order to use those that don't generate them, but with this version of Pleasantview, I have them all, and they drive me nuts.

They completely lack diversity - not just in skin tone (which is a problem with the game that I have started to improve with custom skin tones), but also in family dynamics. Here is a family with a husband & wife. Maybe they have kids already, maybe not. No adult siblings; no divorced or single parents; no gay couples.

What is the difference between the Ramaswamis and the Picasos? Between the Travellers and the Gavigans? Between Cyd Roseland and Julien Cooke? Nothing - that's what.

I made the Ramaswamis, Gavigans and Ottomas into Modest Sims (a religious order with certain rules for dress, jobs, electronics), divorced Trisha & Trent, plan to make the Goodies into some townie's parents when that townie marries into a playable family. But I do not intend to ever play them in the future because they are just SO boring and BLAND.

Well... Cyd Roseland has a dog, so there's a difference.

But yeah, I agree with you, the bin families aren't the most exciting unless you go out of your way to make them so. The Ottomas' and the Newsons have interesting dynamics that make room for challenging gameplay; the Ottomas family with their large family and the Newsons with no adults to help them. The rest are just cookie cutter families; a husband, a wife, and maybe a child...

But I don't hate them; I tend to keep them as if you're not careful everyone in a hood can become related, and I don't like that personally. They stay in the bin mostly, though, unless needed.

EDIT: I don't know if these would count, as they come with Bluewater Village, but the Larsons are siblings. That's a different dynamic for the bin families.

I think the Ramaswamis are my most-hated family. They bore me to tears. This time around I made them into vampires. Priya makes quite an attractive vampire, actually. I moved them into my most-hated house, which is the European townhouse, the tiny one on a huge lot with no landscaping, which I had put at the very bottom of the canyon or dropoff or whatever on the edge of Downtown. They are banished and I forget about them unless they show up on a community lot or someone brings them home from work and they have to fleeeeee!

I don't particularly care for Trisha and Trent Traveller because I think they are neglectful parents, but they don't exactly bore me--although I can't say I mind if bad things happen to them, which they frequently do. I like their daughter, Tina. I have grown her up a few times and I think she is fun to play. I haven't played them this time yet but I think I'm going to make them into free-love hippies who run a commune and do a lot of bubbles and Tina can't wait to grow up and get out of there.

I am tired of the Ottomases because I have played them so often, but I like the three existing kids there once they grow up. I always make Tommy knowledge, and many times he turns out gay and is really a nice Sim. But the twins they have are awful. I think one is always super bad-tempered and throws tons of tantrums. This time, I've killed off the parents/Dora, David is in my game, and the two younger kids are in the adoption pool if I ever need them.

I wouldn't play these families if they didn't have jobs and get brought home from work; then I feel like I should put them in so they can be friends. And the Travellers have a lot of money so they get put in usually to buy the properties where I'm experimenting in some way. That's what they are mainly good for--experiments. Bwa ha ha.

Oh, poor Cyd is already dead. He always gets dead somehow. Poor guy. Porthos is alive and well, though, and in my game.

The main difference between the Ramaswamis and the Picasos is that the Picasos will usually roll wants for lots of children, whereas the Ramaswamis are focused on career promotions and rarely want even one child. This can make them very boring, if you play to wants.

My least favourite premade is Nathan Gavigan, who frequently goes into aspiration failure due to lack of income on the very first day. I've killed him several times, just for being so annoying.

Yeah, i agree with how most of the bin families are very boring. I haven't played them much since i have had the stealth hood replacements forever but really the only imaginative households are Ottomas' and Newsons. Other households are just boring and it's easily shown when i see people playing uberhoods. It's difficult to get interesting storyline for most of these families. I wish they had thought about something imaginative for them since i just feel like they're unnecessary and just created randomly in CAS without any thinking (except for Ottomas' and Newsons probably). Maybe they could have made more nods to TS1 or other sims games with them but they didn't. They're just complete strangers to sims lore.

Which also made me think about another annoying thing about Maxis families especially in the later expansions: The copy+paste families. Roths, Goodies, the sisters in Belladonna Cove etc. that are just copies of the iconic families, usually from Pleasantview. They could've done so much more with the later expansions but they didn't. I see so many fans with very creative families in their custom hoods but it just feels like Maxis got lazy. Despite not being copy+paste family, i feel like Desiderata families especially suffer from being boring.

Oh, the Goodies! The only time I ever 'played' them was for an experiment last year... If I ever play them seriously, I'll probably do what I did with the Oldies; have them adopt a child and a toddler. It's a wholesome dynamic.

The Travellers died, I think. Trent drowned, Trisha drowned, and Tina died of fright as a teen.

And speaking of the EP hoods, yeah, I don't know if it's just me, but I feel that they lack the same charm the base game hoods have, for me personally. Did they have their flaws? Yes. Did they ship pre-corrupted? Definitely. But they had personality and a distinct style; Pleasantview is suburban and filled with soap opera levels of drama, Strangetown is a desert that explores the Sci-Fi elements of the game with the aliens, and Veronaville is a giant Shakespeare play which is fresh and unique.

I can't grasp what the other hoods are supposed to have that make them stand out. One has apartments... I think. With some effort, I reckon you could make them interesting, but yeah...

They just seem bland to me from the outside looking in and that's another pet peeve of mine, because the sims from a genetic standpoint look interesting, but narratively speaking you have to try to make them interesting.

Sorry, I kind of lost myself there.

Over at InSim Monique made a mod called Create baby with X that will allow your seniors to have a kid genetically w/o goin through the pregnancy process. You place a crib, click on it and pick who you want the baby with. The baby will then appear in the crib. I've used this a few times and put it down as a surrogacy pregnancy so that the Goodies and the Oldies can have their own biological/ genetic child.

Because I play on the Mac, the only EP hood I have experience with is Riverblossom Hills, but I just did not care for it. I think the only time I played it extensively was when I was doing a whole Jane Austen style thing because many of the houses fit that theme, but I didn't play the premades except just to see what they were all about. I have since deleted it.

I have tried to play Veronaville many times because I like the concept of it and the characters, and as a hood I think it's very attractive to look at it. But the houses are just unplayable to me. And I don't get a lot of enjoyment out of extensive remodeling. I do like reading other peoples' stories about it. It makes for a lot of drama!

Yeah, Veronaville is a gorgeous neighbourhood with interesting ideas. I can't remember what the houses looked like, as it's been years since I've played it, but planning to change that at some point. I remember the Capp mansion being okay to play in, though that might be just that I'm used to playing the builds given at this point, and I was 9 when I last played the Capps. Riverblossom Hills is the hood with the Greenmans (?), right? I've never really dabbled with the plantsims and it's not a lifestate that particularly interests me, so I can see the disinterest.

Recently with a house in Pleasantview, it's next door to the Goths to the left I think, I realised that some houses are a royal pain. The upstairs rooms in that house were anything but spacious. I couldn't even fit a double bed in any of them I had to get rid of some of the walls and make it sort of diagonal to fit a double bed. Up until then, I though Maxis builds weren't that bad

Sims generating stupid wants such as "playing Marco Polo" when they don't even have a pool in the lot! And also when sims constantly keeps re-rolling the same wants you just done! Like for example my sim Walter, he has a popularity aspiration and he rolled a want to flirt with X sim. I invited the sim over thinking that stuff would go down between them and that Walter would begin rolling the wildest wishes, but instead, after he performed the flirt (thus fullfiling his want), he rolled wants to appreciate her, tickle her and entertain her. All okay there. But then he rolls these wants again! Like, I fullfill his appreciate want, then another one rolls in. Then I do the entertain want, and RIGHT after the appreciate want rolls back again and it keeps repeating on this cycle forever! Ugh!!!

The batbox has an option to Fix > Flashing Blue. You might consider trying this on Kvornan if he refuses to cooperate with Cyjon's mod.



The EP hoods are all demonstrations made to show off the new content and features for that particular EP. Bluewater Village demonstrates what owned businesses are like. Riverblossom Hills shows off the seasons and weather and has a family of Plantsims to play in a house deliberately made to supply their non-standard needs. Desiderata Valley is full of sims with hobby enthusiasm and the Aspir family has a genie lamp in the attic over their garage. Belladonna Cove demonstrates how apartments work and some of the playable sims who live there have reputations.

All the households in these EP 'hoods also show off the new hairs, clothes, walls, floors, furniture, etc. for the EP that they came with.

I found the Create baby with x Mod HERE The download link there actually works as I just found out when I tried to download with it.

Choose a different option every time you fulfill that wants. Often times I notice this happens but if I select a different option the next round it will trigger kiss and make out want. So if you flirt one round by holding hands the next round try the goose option or vice versa.

May I inquire why you used wayback instead of just goin to the site itself for it? InSim is still around. http://www.insimenator.org/index.php?topic=62111.0 link to the mod w/o wayback.

(I mean no offense or anything, so I hope my post doesn't come across that way. I suppose I should have given the link when I posted 'bout the mod above. Hindsight )

Haha! Yes! I have this all the time. I think I mentioned it somewhere, but Angela Pleasant in my game has these stupid wants constantly. It's why I play loosely by wants and not dictating everything by wants.

I have the Batbox, funnily enough, and that thought never once occurred to me I will keep that in mind when I next load that house.

Oh, yeah, I know that. I just meant story wise, they're a bit 'meh' from the outside looking in. That said, I will give them a go in the future and see what I can do

The EP hoods are really good ways to explore the new mechanics of an EP and show off the new cosmetics. However, some sims within them are either copies of some Pleasantview sims (Roth=Goth, Cordial Sisters=Pleasant Sisters), or they are one of two things; career driven or family driven. Base game hoods have these types of sims in them, sure, but they have bios that add to the hoods overall narrative and have more things going on in them. The EP hoods, in comparison, don't have much, maybe except that woman who left her family to be a pirate, but that's it. Maybe there's more than I'm thinking, though.

I'm not saying I despise these hoods, by the way! I haven't dabbled in them properly, yet. But, I'm just comparing base game hoods to the ones that came later, if that makes sense.

My Ellen Frost is especially prone to this with, of all things, buying ceiling fans. She loves them. She will not be satisfied until every single room in Boggs Hall Dorms has a ceiling fan.



Maybe you just need to send him to the mirror. I've had a couple of hats that flashed blue that I fixed but the Sims already wearing them had to look in the mirror for the fix to kick in.

It doesn't make me go Grrrr, but at times, I'm thinking "Really?"

If their LT/ST relationship with another Sim is high enough, even Romance Sims will leap into the arms of a Sim who proposes to them and appear to be overjoyed. But then they get a negative memory from it. And once they're engaged and if their relationship stays high, then they're going to accept the marriage proposal but again will get a negative memory from it.

Why can't some Romance Sims (randomly?) nicely reject those proposals without destroying the relationship? Sort of a "I really love you, but I'm just not the marrying type." Or even "I'm not ready to settle down yet. You understand that, don't you?" And some partners would be okay with that while others could see it as a flat rejection and their LT/ST relationship would then greatly suffer. Since they get a negative memory of it, why do they so openly welcome the proposal?

Yes, I wish accepting a proposal took more into account than relationship, like also aspiration and even wants/fears. I'd like to see more rejected proposals in my game. I also wish there was a relationship level for adults that was more akin to serious relationship or living together. I know there is a mod for adults go steady, but that doesn't really work for me; it's too cutesy and something I want to reserve only for teens. Right now, if an adult couple is living together romantically in my game, they have to get engaged so I can get the break up and confess to cheating interactions--I just consider that to be "living together." But they don't get married unless both members of the couple have a want to. I do occasionally subvert this for story purposes, but usually only if I know someone will get the married a rich Sim memory, which is a good one.

I'm considering getting the no BFFs mod from MATY to change things up. Once sims are BFFs, their relationships are ridiculously solid.

The only reject proposal or reject get married (other than Cassandra and Don) I've had in game was because Jay Zaide (a generated dormie) wanted to marry. He tried really hard with Ivy Copur, but moved way too fast. She refused his first proposal, but accepted his second (he was hurt, but it didn't destroy their relationship), but when he followed that proposal IMMEDIATELY with a wedding party, it proved too much for her. Meanwhile, he then married someone else at that wedding who had been his friend/BFF forever, but didn't get romantically involved with until she saw him abandoned at the alter and went in for a kiss.

Yeah exactly! Just like EVERY single romance sim always rolls wishes to cheat on their partners or alike. It would be nice if their wants and fears would vary from their personality or if it would be completely random after aging up and selecting the romance aspiration or if you could choose between a "good" romance sim or a "housewrecker".

For the romance issues, I use mods--No Instant Love by Pescado, to be specific. I know a lot of simmers have switched over to Simler90's Romantic Standards, but I still have ACR & Inteen, so I use Pescado's mods. No Instant Love makes it so that sims don't automatically fall in love--attraction level, personality, and aspiration all factor in when a sim falls in love or gets a crush. And of course, that affects the proposal actions, and even some romantic ones sometimes, because if one sim is not in love with the other they'll say no. Case in point, just last week I was playing the Summerdreams. For context, I recently restarted Veronaville and I did play Capp Manor first so Hermia and Puck already dated, and even slept together. When I got around to playing the Summerdreams, Puck rolled a want to go steady with Hermia. I let him go for it, because like I said, they already dated for a while and I was pretty sure Hermia was in love with him. But, to our surprise, she rejected him. Twice. Puck had to ask a third time and take Hermia on another date before she agreed to go steady. So yeah, definitely more challenging for Romance sims and couples with low chemistry to commit to each other, without additional mods.

I used to also use Pescado's Romance Mod, which makes sims show loyalty to existing relationships. I personally found that one a little too constricting, as some of my playables would find dating townies difficult because the local Romance sim(s) got to the townie first. Then the townie wouldn't want to start a new relationship because they were in involved with someone else. I'd prefer that townies see their dates with Romance sims as one night stands, so I ended up nixing that mod, but if you want to make it harder for sims to cheat on each other and to fall in love with multiple sims, then it's a good option. For me, though, No Instant Love is good on it's own. It takes a while or very high chemistry for sims to fall in love. And Family sims fall in love faster and more easily than Romance and Pleasure sims, which makes sense in my head.