Hiya!

I play wants based where my sims really only do things if they do it themselves via free will, or it's one of their wants and I direct them to do so. But I don't make them do things unless they have a want for it....
....Most of the time.

At some point through university Lilith Pleasant and Jimmy Phoenix met and they had two chemistry bolts. And it's very rare in my game for anyone to have 3, so to me I'm like OH TWO BOLTS IT'S MEANT TO BE and then I thought about it and I watched the two of them chat and I began shipping them hard. Like I really hoped that she'd have bad chemistry with Dirk when he got to university so I could be like yep she'll definitely be with Jimmy.
But she also had two bolts with Dirk when he got there. So I let ACR do it's thing. And she fell in love with Jimmy. Whilst still going steady with Dirk which sort of bothered me because I didn't see her as the kind of person who would cheat but oh well. She was not in love with Dirk because they had not had any romantic interactions yet. But I still wasn't going to break them up 'cause you never know what ACR could do later on.

But I still just really, really shipped her and Jimmy.

Then I got to Jimmy in the rotations and he had a fear of being rejected for engagement by Lilith. He didn't specifically have a want to get engaged to her. But he had the fear of being rejected for it.
So I decided to take some creative liberties and was like that's enough for me! And had him call her up and get engaged anyway. Now she has some explaining to do to Dirk but I mean. I just really wanted this.

So what I want to ask you guys, if you also play wants-based, how do you decide between things your sim wants to do vs things you want to do? Where do you draw the line of how much influence you can have?

I love love love this

In my game, it's Angela who fell all over herself for Jimmy. So funny.

First off, in my wants-based play, I also consider any fears as an expression of wants. If you are afraid they are going to refuse your proposal, then it's because they want to propose.

I'll invite a Sim over if my sim has the desire to talk to someone, and I send them to community lots whenever I feel like it because in normal circumstances people don't just live in their houses.

And I use plot to do somethings that I want to have happen. My Vote for what happens in my game thread in my signature overrides any wants, too, so Lance Goth is going to work hard to because Criminal Mastermind whether he gets the skills wants for it or not. Or David Ottomas either has to make some money while in university or stay living with his family when he gets married, which he does NOT want, so that will influence my choices too.

And sometimes if I need them to skill, I will send them to stand beside a chessboard or an easel and hope.

I do both, I play wants-based and I also play against them based on what I want to happen. I have a fairly strict rule on my founding families intermarrying at least in the first few generations. However, in my 2nd generation of born in-game sims I had a pairing I had no chance of keeping apart.

Merlin Huntington and Sabrina Meager, they both have twin siblings and are the 2nd child in their families. They routinely brought each other home from school as children and once they became teenagers I found out they were triple bolters. Endless wants to call/talk/invite/go steady followed. I did a lot of things to distract them from each other including having them date townies. Did not matter the minute they both showed up on the same lot they were inseparable and ACR did the rest.

When they got to Uni I tried again to distract them with other sims. I even went so far as to add CAS dormies that would each would have a high attraction for. Did not matter they would show up on a community lot and be instantly glued together like magnets. I gave up and let them get engaged. Even now when they get invited to other parties all they do is interact with each other. When Sabrina's older sister got married they spent the wedding ceremony woohooing in the hot tub.

I certainly don't fulfill some of my sims crazier wants like wanting to have 10 kids or my fortune sims wanting a DJ booth. "What would you even do with that?" Is what I often say.

I like to play wants-based, but I think you have to be flexible with it and let yourself tell the story, or otherwise it can get boring and repetitive. So if Jimmy had a fear of Lilith rejecting his proposal, you could interpret it as he wanted to ask but was just really, really nervous about it. Yet he went ahead and prevailed!

Also in life, sometimes we have to do what we don't want just because of circumstances. I've never had a Sim want to drop out of college or get divorced, but the circumstances of the story left them no other options. Or they may do things autonomously that tell me what they want, even if they aren't expressing that in an actual want. I feel that character emerges in multiple ways, and wants/fears are just one aspect of that. So for me, story trumps everything. Otherwise, it's just not interesting.

So good on you for taking an alternate route to the Lilith-Dirk pairing!

I play to make them want to have the wants that I want them to have.

Ok, enough confusion. I don't play their wants if they're not going to advance their lives.

For instance: I've got a pixel who is ungainfully employed as bank robber, but she wants to play sports instead. Instead of changing her wants, I lock the want to be in the sports career (or law) and make her take the crime career she wanted the first time, and then work through it.

if she doesn't advance in that career and doesn't want to, (by not actively skilling up for it or rolling wants to do so) I then let her take the sports career because she really, really wants to play sports, and she's stuck in a dead end job-she's earned it. She's reached middle level, and that's probably as good as it gets for her. She's smart-she did go to college, and graduated. What's she doing in crime, anyway? Fulfilling a bucket wish?

She just wants to go legit, and she knows that she's missing out on life by working in crime. So it's time for a change. She'll quit her present job and take the sports one, be happy and probably get on with it.

So we'll both be happy, and actually a lot of real life people have the same damn thing happen to them. Most of them never get to do it, though. My pixels will, if I have anything to do with it!

I think I mentioned this somewhere, but I play loosely wants based.

Skilling and careers are left solely to wants and free will. Romantic prospects are occasionally dependent on free will and wants, but it's mostly on chemistry, or whether or not I want the pairing to happen. If I ship a pair, I'll semi force it, but if I'm not really bothered on who a sim dates, I'll leave it to free will and wants.

By forcing, I mean changing gender preferences (In Crystal Pleasantview, Johnny and Zidane (An Oldie adopted kid) had two bolts after changing their gender preference to bi), placing a two bolt couple together in the same room and see if fireworks happen (Tiffany and Tank, again, Crystal Pleasantview), or very rarely changing turn ons to see if my ship happens (Lazlo and Erin).

If I'm telling a story, I'll go the route I want regardless of wants. I do welcome the surprises of free will and ACR, though. Getting thrown off your story a bit, at least for me, adds intrigue.

Sit back and think about wants realistically. In real life, there's different kinds of wants - impulses (I see candy bar, I eat candy bar); goals (I want to be a novelist); pipe dreams (I want to travel the world); needs (I want to not starve in a capitalist society); obligations (I want to fulfill my promises and take care of those who rely on me), and so on.

Different people have different priorities and different degrees of discipline. We're all familiar with people who let one class of wants overshadow others -who allow their drive to succeed in business wreck their families; who let their long-term goals slide because they fritter away their time on short-term benefits; who fulfill their obligations at the expense of personal fulfillment; and so on. So at any given point it's up to you, as player, to interpret a sim's wants in light of their overall character and goals, and decide what is best for your game. Which may or may not be what's best for this sim.

Bearing in mind that wants that are filled are more likely to reroll than wants that are ignored, and that you are training sims when you direct them, think about the role of this sim in your game, and whether it would be more satisfactory for you to play them as ethical or unethical, long-term goal directed or short-term goal directed, selfish or selfless, wise or foolish. Consider also the circumstances of your game. I like to let sims pick their own partners and find them usually pretty clear on that point - including sims who don't want partners at all, but wish to play the field indefinitely. I've had one sim who very plainly wanted to live with all his girlfriends and children in one big happy communal family, and that was never going to happen because I was not about to mod out jealousy. I have also had sims who wished for smaller polyamorous arrangements, and used antijealousy potions to make them real. I am playing both modern and retro Strangetown with limited economies - certain jobs are off the table, I don't care how much a sim wants to reach the top of them; but in other neighborhoods, sure, be a world class ballet dancer, go for it! I find rabbit hole jobs boring, so I'm in no hurry to fill LTWs. The sims die just as permaplat if they hit the top of their career and die in the next hour as they do if they make it before their kids grow up. So all my sims get good relationships with their families, take time for vacations and toddler training, etc. But not everyone feels that way. Maybe you think it would be interesting if one of your Fortune sims, who rolls the typical Fortune systematic wants for the skills and items needed for promotion, neglected their personal life racing to the top of the ladder and then looked around and found their lives empty, permaplat or not. If so, then - go for that, and let the families respond accordingly. A pleasure sim who never rolls a skilling want may never reach their LTW of Celebrity Chef because they spend all their time filling the small day-to-day wants.

When you play to wants, permaplat sims can be boring because there's no benefit to filling the want, so do you want to mod out the status or restrict it in some way?

I like to identify goals, which can be short-term (potty train the toddler) or long-term (marry my fiancee who still has two years in university) and lock those. Baby wants get locked if I want them to have a baby; wants to sell a masterpiece get locked, even if the sim only has two creativity points, if I decide they want to make a living as an artist. I normally consider ten-baby wants as pipe dreams or endorphin-induced temporary insanity and have only locked it for one couple - who didn't make it because I decided not to keep feeding the mother elixir past a certain point. I lock woohoo wants for some college virgins because that's a natural want they can work toward and involves doing a series of interesting things, like getting out and meeting people, scoping rooms, making friends, and ultimately dating to the woohoo point. I don't do ACR and treat woohoo wants as physiological states, so locking a woohoo want represents that period of life so many people have when sex is all they can think about. Other sims, however, are more focused on work or school goals, or already have a committed relationship with a specific person. A locked want to make Dean's List may entail a stressful, low-aspiration semester of studying and working for which the sim rolls no individual wants, just as in real life, rewarded in the end. A want for an engagement may not be a realistic goal - if a Fortune sim loves a Romance sim, say - but can motivate a whole sequence of actions intended to make it realistic, such as getting a job and a house suitable to move the desired person into, changing appearance or fitness state to increase chemistry, and so on.

Don't forget the fears, either. If my Romance sims roll a want to get engaged to the person they're currently with, without a matching fear - they're popping the question even if it's obviously a bad idea. A matching fear, however, means this is an impulse which they recognize as an impulse and wisdom keeps their mouth shut. A fear of rejection for an engagement without a want for an engagement represents nerves to me - the sim is more afraid of rejection than anxious to achieve the goal. Fear of rejection with the want in a non-romance sim, however, gets the go-ahead -they're nervous but recognize that nothing ventured, nothing gained. A fear of academic probation is enough for a sim to study enough skills to open up the grade bar (which, unless it's very late in the semester, will be easy to fill to the passing mark) but is not enough, in the absence of wants, to do more than that - not enough for term papers or non-autonomous assignments. And so on.

Your job as player is not to blindly fill wants, but to consider their implications and use them to make your game more fun for you. Decide what you want, and develop a want-filling strategy that gets it for you, bearing in mind that your strategy doesn't have to be consistent. You can vary it from neighborhood to neighborhood, or from sim to sim. No one has to be pleased with the result but you.

Like a lot of simmers have said here so far, I tend to lean more toward story than wants. Especially since the more wants are fulfilled the more you're training your sim to roll them! I like to use the wants as a way to push a story further, or add an interesting twist to the story if it fits when rolled. I'm much more want based when it comes to their career or time in university though. Does a sim have the desire to improve their career or do assignments? Then they'll go much further than the sims who don't. As far as romance goes, I like to let my sims choose. I will lean them toward a sim they have more chemistry with but otherwise try and keep to who they're naturally flirting with. I love your idea Peni in regards to the impulse wants of an engagement in tandem with a fear of it. I'm definitely going to implement that into my own game.

I've had sims roll want that I could see not progressing their lives like fortune sims keep rolling wants to buy tons of expensive things while living in that tiny starter home or cheap rental apartment and I just don't let them make those purchases though I do allow new clothing to be purchased as that's usually needed since they need to change outerwear and other outfit catagories for the seasons.I make sims living in rental rooms in boarding houses,cheap apartments or tiny starter home work on building that cash supply up and saving up to afford a bigger place like a larger homestead so they can prepare to start a family.I'veactually had family sims saving tons of cash up and working like crazy to build wealth up to be able to afford a biiger proparty so they could start their family.

Thanks for the responses!

I tend to let my sims tell me the story, rather than writing it myself, which is why I try and have as minimal influence as possible. I want you to tell me who you are. I do always try and have at least one want locked at any point in time unless they are all dumb wants like playing catch or things like that.
If the sim doesn't want to progress their life in any way, well, then they don't. I used to play where I made sure every single sim was as successful as possible. Everybody went to college, everybody had perfect GPA, everybody reached level 10, everybody fulfilled their LTW. I suppose this stems from how my own parents expected me to be and I imposed that on to my sims. But I've been really trying to let my sims live their own lives and if they don't want to go to college they won't, if they don't want to gain skills to get promoted they won't, if they don't actively roll wants towards their LTW then they probably aren't gonna make it and I'll just have to be okay with that.

I did take another liberty though, in that I found out Cyd Roseland was bisexual in my game and I realized I had more men without potential partners than women, and so I used sim blender to force him to meet my gay playables Erik Swain and Castor Nova and see what their chemistry would be. I realize that him being bisexual he could be with a man or a woman but if he's with a woman then I still have more men without anyone should they want someone. So if I can get Cyd with a guy I probably will. He has one bolt with Erik and two with Castor. But as Erik being a family sim who wants to fall in love, and Castor seemingly not giving any thought to love whatsoever, I may decide to meddle again. :p

I think sometimes why I get bored with my neighborhoods is that I lose sight of an overarching character for each of my Sims that also helps determine their choices, even if those don't align with their wants. This leads to everyone falling into predictable patterns for their aspirations with no real change, and lack of change is boring.

I've been giving this some thought when thinking about restarting Pleasantview with a plan to not intermarry the main families. With Angela/Dustin and Lilith/Dirk having such high relationship scores and ACR in play, they would likely get thrust into romantic relationships if they were put in the same room together. So I decided to look at their LTWs and play each one alone a little bit to get a sense of their character and what they want from life. For instance, Angela wants to be an Icon. She likely wants a life of luxury and people adoring her. Even if she was absolutely crazy for Dustin, practically she wouldn't choose him because he can't give her what she ultimately wants, and she is a practical woman. Likewise, Lilith is a true Pleasure Sim in my eyes. She needs excitement, nights out, lots of fun. And let's face it--Dirk is sweet but boring. He's a hard worker and a homebody, so he'd get fed up with Lilith always wanting to be out. So again, they could both be totally in love with each other, but I don't think they would choose each other.

I do want them to tell me who they are, but sometimes you have to meddle to ensure that they behave according to who they are. Otherwise, they'll likely go down the track of typical Popularity or Fortune Sim or whatever.

Okay, so this is almost exactly what happened in my game!!! Angela dumped Dustin for Jimmy Phoenix, who is from a good family and who wanted to be a lawyer. She's a famous novelist and in the Show Business career. Meanwhile Lilith and Dirk did stay together, but Dirk wanted to get to the top of his career and save up money while Lilith wanted to party and wanted him to PAY ATTENTION TO HER instead of being in his lab every night. They eventually learned to compromise, but it took Dirk catching her cheating, and Dustin acting as couple counsellor to get them to the good place they are now.

I have to say, I need to try to pay a bit more attention to my Sims personalities, or change them if it really doesn't work for me. I'm always thrown by Nina being so shy - she was a lounge singer, so I'm surprised by her fear of karaoke whenever she goes out. I've probably made some really nice sims into villains and some really mean sims into benevolent types.
I do like the discussion regarding selfish sims and sims who put others first. Jimmy definitely puts Angela ahead of himself - he raised the children, he worked hard so that she could buy her childhood home after her adopted sister, Elysse, sold it when their mother Mary-Sue died. Angela is all about her wants and needs. It's a fun dynamic.

I have spent years thinking that I play according to the wants of my Sims.

Then it dawned on me that : "No, you cannot have a piano, where the hell do you want to put it?"; "Get your ass to work, you cannot stay at home without leave with your bank balance"; "I don't care how much you fear changing that diaper, just get on with it"" and "I am selling your telescope, 3 alien babies is more than enough" - may not be the correct way.

Who cares? Not me, as long as I have fun (and sometimes, the sims have fun too)

I've often had to say no to wants like having a baby though it might get locked in if they're not far from that point where they'll want a baby.I'll make them go to work or build up skills if I want them to have a happy family and not end up having a broken home or dysfunctional family.
@Justpetro -That sounds an awful lot like my games with most of my families.

My pixels will do what I want. If it coincides with their want, it's good for them. I am currently playing projects medieval and earlier with all morale then included. It has nothing to do with their modern wants.

My sims mostly do what they want to that's why I love free will and autonomous actions unless I decide otherwise.
Let's face it. They also do stupid things like putting the leftovers away when they're hungry.

One of my favourite things to do is have a Sim ask another what they want.

If a Romance Sim asks another what they want, and the answer is "to get married" or "to get engaged to you" then that Romance Sim has a decision to make - propose or break up.

I had a Popularity Sim ask a townie she was dating what he wanted and he told her "to have two loves at once". She then realized he was not someone she should leave her more long term boyfriend for.

If you've played for a while, you've figured out how to give every sim every thing they want by game mechanics. Simply timing a romance sim's dates for when their spouse is at work and never taking chance cards can get them those twenty lovers without ever getting caught cheating, after all.

Actions not having consequences gets boring for many of us. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of us who play by wants or largely by wants use those wants and a ruleset that together create conflict potential. If we play the above mentioned cheater, we might also have a rule that every chance card must be taken. Or we might have rules that certain careers require certain colleges, and colleges have different entry requirements, so a student who doesn't roll wants to do homework in high school with a want to be the top in the medicine career might never be able to get that want fulfilled. Or that certain careers are only in certain subhoods, and sims might have to choose between career goals and relationships.

Then, of course, there are simmers who prefer a conflict-free game who don't use such restrictions and play by wants to keep their sims happy, and that's just fine too.

Ultimately the goal is to enjoy your game. Not my game, not Peni's game, or Andrew's game, or SimSample's game, or anyone else's, but your own. If it makes you happy to engage Jimmy and Lilith, then you made the right choice.

I might, in your shoes, ask if Lilith was really sure about saying yes, as she hadn't rolled any wants or fears about getting engaged to Jimmy, and why he might have feared rejection more than wanting to get engaged, and maybe come up with a bit of game play related to Lilith knowing about her dad's affair(s) and being uncertain about commitment because of that, while perhaps Jimmy was abandoned as a child (as he hasn't any in-game family) and fears rejection again as an adult. But that would be my game, and my drama, and yours might or might not be similar.

Ya know, I don't think I have ever once clicked Ignore on a chance card. I always choose. The only times I've ever skipped a chance card is sometimes if someone else was in the room while I was playing and I'd ask them what to do and it took too long and the card disappeared thereby ignoring it. Otherwise clicking ignore feels borderline cheaty to me.

^ I use JobStopinator to hold people at certain levels, I click ignore when that's in play because the card does nothing. Good or bad nothing changes with the JobStopinator.

It's very interesting to see this thread at this time because I was thinking of posting something very similar just a few days ago.

I love to play to my Sim's wants and see them shape themselves as little pixel people, but sometimes I just want something to happen and doing what my Sim wants to do would simply ruin the fun for me.

For example, I recently started up a University play through with a single female sim. I was using a custom University neighborhood and I'm not sure if that's what caused it, or if it always happens, but the game generated a whole set of dormies for my sim that I've never seen before.
One of them was (in my opinion) particularly cute, and I sort of began to "ship" them just like your situation. But, my sim only had 1 chemistry bolt with him, and 2 with some other dormie who.. I didn't ship her with very much.

I was faced with a bit of a conundrum- should I let my sim go with the 2 bolt dormie who I wasn't very fond of, or should I make the ship happen anyway? As silly as it is to say, I did feel kind of bad when I thought about "forcing" my sim into my "ship," but honestly I think I'm over that now.
No matter what anyone says, this game is a sandbox game and you should do whatever is more fun or enjoyable to you. I chose to do what I wanted to do rather than what my sim wanted to do because I knew if I let my sim pursue the 2 bolt dormie I would feel sour and disappointed and wouldn't have as much fun.

Wants based gameplay is wonderful but I would never want to strictly limit myself to it at all times because it would make me feel extremely limited and lacking in control in what is supposed to be one of the biggest sandbox games out there.