I figured that I should move this question from the Stupid Questions thread to its own as I could not seem to find any answer to this question. Basically, I found that for a while now many of my sims have been rolling extremely basic wants (see attached image for reference). I tried looking for a mod that could possibly have caused this and removed wfsanity by Pescado and noticed some other wants roll in (the annoying ones like wanting to purchase handheld game and/or MP3 player, but others that I do like, like adopting pets or teaching pets a skill). Though the wants are still mostly generic and several that are aspiration-based are missing altogether.

Examples of missing wants:
• Both fortune/popularity sims who max the Creativity skill never roll the wants to sell a masterpiece or a best-selling novel.
• Both fortune/knowledge sims are not rolling the want for their child to be enrolled in private school.
• A family sim is not rolling the wants to teach their toddler any skills.
• An elder family sim, with 6 want slots, never rolled the want to have a grandchild (even though he had married children). I should note that he just recently rolled the want, after his spouse died and he went in to aspiration failure.
• Engaged sims are not rolling the want to throw a wedding party or get married.
• Adult sims do not roll wants for newly-aged teen children to receive scholarships or be overachievers. (sometimes it happens)
• Adult sims do not have the want for their child to grow up well or throw a birthday party for them.

I noticed this occurring after I played another daily for a long period of time to "catch them up" in my neighbourhood and so these wants become bland once the other sims become "neglected". The only time I see these wants change/fix is when the sim ages up (and that one case of aspiration failure), though it's not always the case as seen with the Sim in the picture (who recently graduated from University). I have already tried sending the sims to community lots yet it did not refresh the bland wants. Even sims in new lots (uni grads) seem to have these bland wants as well. Since I removed wfsanity, the "talk to sim" wants have began disappearing and replaced with "call x" and "invite over" which I guess is a positive, but they still appear bland.

I saw on another post that a potential solution would be to move the families out and move them back in to their respective houses. Is that the only solution? Could there be another mod I have that would be causing this? There are still some households that do not have bland memories but I fear that if they get "neglected" (based on the games judgement) when I want to create another family to "catch up". Any direction would be greatly appreciated.

Almost certainly, what mods do you have? Backup your neighbourhood then test with the mods removed. Play your family for a while, do they roll different wants?

That want is determined by hobby enthusiasm, not how much creativity skill they have. Increase their enthusiasm in Arts and Crafts enough and it should roll. At least, in my experience.


Not all of them do straight away.


That one doesn't happen always (at least for me)


Again... not a very common want in my game either, so I figured it's just a rare want.

The other wants though, like grandparents with the family aspiration not rolling wants for grandchildren is odd; they never stop wanting them in my game Do you have other mods that affect wants, such as WantHacks and the one that prevents the abundance of hobby based wants. Also, which version of WFSanity did you have? I believe a user on here made a fixed version, or something, but I could be wrong.

This is the link to the fixed WFsanity mod. By coincidence, I was looking this up last night for myself.
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=640293

Edited to add: I’m getting better wants now. One of my sims rolled a want to give a gift — because it was winter. I haven’t seen that in my game in ages.

Thanks for the replies! I'll definitely back up my neighbourhood and remove mods to see if anything changes. I guess the conditions I will need to test include moving families in to a new lot and then "neglecting" them to see if their wants become bland. I actually put Pescado's wfsanity back in my game as my Sims were rolling very strange wants without it (like wanting to perform interactions with a sim not present on a lot and family sims consistently wanting to flirt/talk/play with sims who were not their spouse).

@CrystalFlame360 I have Super Collection for Mac so I don't have hobbies unfortunately (though I wish I do, sometimes my Sims have free time on their hands). I know some wants are not fairly common, but it seems strange to me that several of my sims are all rolling the same wants and no variety is appearing at all. Pescado's wfsanity has been updated as of October 2020 and I actually reached out to @Kestrellyn just right now. I'm not sure if I should be using their's or Pescado's though based on the attached thread. I also don't have a single of TwoJeff's Want Hacks installed and those annoying wants often appear as well.

What I genuinely find weird is that my graduated sims would always roll the want to get married to their fiancés upon graduating, which I'm basing on my previous experience from my old game. I know that these get drowned out by other events happening but what I predominantly find strange is fortune/popularity Sims never rolling the want to sell a masterpiece (which would appear the instant they max the creativity skill if they are not "neglected").

I also found these two screenshots of the family sim elder in question who never rolled the want to have a grandchild. He rolled only the same wants for as long as he was in elder-hood (see the first image). The second image is seconds later after his husband died. I set up my game to play on 2-day rotations throughout the neighbourhood and it took some time to get all the families on the same schedule so his household did become "neglected" on some occasions and then the wants always remained this bland. I should also mention that Kestrellyn quickly mentioned to me that the wants are remaining bland has my Sims have been maintaining high-enough aspirations to not roll wants those high-reward wants. That may be the next area to check.

The only wants mod I believe I have is midge's Step-Parents Baby Wants Satisfied installed but I would not think that it would affect all my wants.

Oh, I thought that the masterpiece want was tied to hobby enthusiasm, but if it rolls without Freetime, then that means it isn't. Sorry for stating incorrect info before!

Anyway, I have kestrellyn's version of WFSanity installed, as I was unaware of Pescado's mod updating. It seems to work for me, and wants that didn't roll for me with Pescado's installed roll now. In the process, I've just noticed how often sims roll wants to invite someone over... I've missed it honestly, so it's welcome.

Since you said that you played in two day rotations, could that be the reason why they are rolling bland wants? Myself, and many others, have noticed that the more wants are satisfied, the more they roll. Maybe playing them for a little longer will help some?

Once I installed kestrellyn’s fix, my wants spiced up quite a bit. My sims got seasonal wants to get into snowball fights, make snow angels, give gifts. I forgot many of those wants existed. I’m looking forward to seeing what else will pop up.

I installed Pescado’s director’s cut mods on my new machine long after October 2020. So I don’t like his newest version. It doesn’t surprise me that a mod of his made my wants bland. I could totally see Pescado “optimizing” the wants to get rid of anything “non-awesome” and that included any wants that aren’t directly tied just the basics.

These last few days, I’ve been looking up some other peeves I’ve had about the game, and found a few of Pescado’s mods were the culprit. (Alfixes was a biggie) He tends to remove features he finds frivolous or isn’t interested in — and doesn’t document those changes. I’m working on replacing most of my MATY hacks because of this. I’ll keep the critical fixes but not a lot else.

Pescado’s got some great fixes and mods out there, but he has a different play style than a lot of us. I won’t get too deep into it, because people might assume I dislike him or don’t appreciate his fixes. But I can see someone complaining that wants are too bland for wants-style playing and Pescado would probably tell you “stop playing that way. It’s inefficient and non-awesome. Problem solved.”

The issue isn't totally related to wfsanity by Pescado though, based on my understanding. It actually was sort-of worse when I removed it due to the weird wants to flirt with others. I may install Kestrellyn's alternative in that case.

Could this also conflict with midge's mod that I linked above? It incorporates TwoJeff's BabyWantsFix as well.

I don't think that the two day rotations are causing this as some of the wants I speak of usually appear when you first load the lot.

"Sell the Masterpiece" want appears for me only if sim has lvl 9 creativity and not at max. I think it is again only one-time memory what causes this and if you do not lock it on time it will not reroll.
Also if elder sim is still active in marriage he barely rolls wants to have grandchildren because he can still be a father.

What do you mean by active in marriage? And yeah I completely understand for the creativity want. The want never rolled for several of my sims at this point and I'm wondering if it's now if I should move them back on to their home lot.

Elder male sims can have children until the death and if they have partner they forget of their age.
In your example I see only normal wants and on second image he fell into aspiration failure what rolled wants jumping over several steps. "Get married" before "Get engaged" and "Get grandchildren" before "Child get married"

The wants you describe are NOT the kind of wants my sims got that made me download wfsanity. I'm wondering if you have a mod that's giving you those weird wants and wfsanity is stopping those.

The stuff I got was like this: Sim brings Sally home from school. Sim wants to become friends with Fred, play with Fred, talk to Fred. So I send Sally home and invite Fred over. Fred comes over and my sim wants to hang out with Sally now. Or, My sim would be on his lot without a pool. Sim would want to go swimming and play Marco Polo. I take him to the pool and he suddenly wants nothing to do with the pool. He wants to talk to a relative and gain a skillpoint. I send him home and he wants to hustle pool and play poker. He can't do that on the lot, of course.

I have Pescado's October 2020 updated version of wfsanity installed and have not gotten a single invite over want. I had removed it when I first made this post and put it back in to my game as wants were quite weirder without it. I addressed this to Kestrellyn in another conversation yesterday and she mentioned that she would take a look in to it.

Some wants I still never see (even though they're supposed to be there):
• Call target (all I get is mostly other than the generic is "talk to target" which I guess is fine; it's also worth 500 aspiration points compared to the call target which is only worth 100)
• Invite target over
• Invite someone over
• Adopt pet (apparently this is based on interest in animals, yet none of my sims roll this want)

Now that you mention it, I do get the want to hustle pool and buy clothes often while my Sims are on their home lot and perhaps this is on purpose? In any case, I take it as a hint to go venture off to a community lot for a bit (only Pleasure sims roll the want to go to a Community Lot for me). I have never seen the want to play poker though, maybe Pescado's updated hack has taken that in to account.

@Annaminna you have a point, though perhaps the couple could always adopt another child (which never rolled in the elder stage though) the grandchild want did never appear. Those other wants I would consider "desperation wants" as the sims' meter is in the red and would appear respective to each aspiration.

I think I've come to terms with the wants right now, especially since I am considering changing my game set up, installing bootcamp on my Mac, and finally installing UC after all these years. I still have a feeling that they are missing the 'oomf' that is given each time a sim grows up, so it may have something to do with my rotation style. It's just weird as I played on a single-day rotation style in my old game and noticed far more of these wants appearing (though never to throw a birthday party for their child though). Also, I should mention that sims in university don't seem to experience this issue as much as I find that completing a semester also counts as the 'oomf' I described.

Edit: Just noticed the first adult sim to roll a want to adopt a pet, he had 6 interest points in animals. He was in a "neglected household" and did roll the want after a season change as I was playing the family to catch them up. Children will roll the wants regardless based on my understanding. I actually believe that the season change acts as a trigger for this "oomf" I described. My issue may be with when I actually save and complete my round, which should be before the change takes effect.

So it's been almost a month since I last responded to this thread and I just want to mention that I still can't figure out what's causing this. Also, I was incorrect about the age transitioning as I find the adult and elder life stages predominantly to have these extremely bland wants. Several elder family sims of mine never roll wants to have grandchildren which absolutely baffles me (see attached screenshots) as I'm used to being spammed with that want.

I don't know if I had a mod that affected this and that I've potentially removed it and that only time will tell if this is resolved or not. It feels like I will need a whole generation to die off in my hood before I figure out if this is still prevalent.

I find that my sims have bland wants until I do stuff with them.

Once they have a few relationships and some hobby enthusiasm and some skills, they will start wanting more of those things - want to interact with people, (sometimes specific people), want to date/meet/woohoo more people (or the ones they already know, or non-specific, in which case I interpret it as I wish) hobby related wants - I do use WFSanity because I don't like the hobby wants dominating, but I don't mind them coming up once they actually have some enthusiasm.

They also need to interact with the people they know and like regularly to roll wants about them. If they are in love with someone but haven't seen them for 3 in-game weeks it's like they don't exist any more.

Well, @trambling101 - it seems to me as if all the sims in the pics are in platinum mood.
That means they are extremely happy and there is simply no need for extravagant wants.
I would have them going on vacation, letting them take as many friends as they want - or at least to community outings. Keep them busy. And happy - they can talk as much as they want during a good social outing.

I do fulfil these wants but then they become generic subject-related wants over and over again. If I do the "talk to" with their partner it always turns to "flirt with X", then "kiss X" and "make out with X", and then "woohoo with X", and then often again back to "flirt with X" and repeat. I've seen other elder family sims roll wants for "relative gets engaged/married" and "have grandchild" but those never appear for these sims.

Furthermore, I've had several sims with fortune and popularity that should spam the sell masterpiece want when close to maxing the creativity skill, yet it never appears as well. Oddly enough, there was a single elder family sim (one who has the spammy grandchildren wants) who actually rolled the want to sell a best-selling novel. She aged up after them so I figure it's a time will tell issue.

I'm also starting to think that it may have something to do with Sims appearing on other lots. Like their wants are rerolled obviously when they are loaded as a visitor and I often throw several large parties so this may be something that I've started to consider as well. Like they get "blandified" by leaving their bubble (lol).

I do not believe it is something to worry about, though. Parties and outings do seem to trigger popular wants in all sims.
Elders - when the kids have left -do get more social; perhaps it is because of the empty nests
I would not worry too much about fulfilling the bland wants. Make them do something interesting instead? Get them a pottery wheel or a robot station or something or let them plant a row of tomatoes. A new interest will soon give way to new wants.

Yeah I really wish I had freetime with this issue, guess I just have what OFB gives me to be honest.

Well, I think fulfilling the bland wants makes them show up more often, so you can try ignoring those for a while. But otherwise, not every sim rolls the same wants, or even rolls them when you expect. With Family sims for example, some elder sims roll wants for their offspring well before things ever have a chance of happening, rolling wants for so and so to get married or to have grandchildren. Other Family sims roll those wants later; like if one of their children is pregnant, that's when they start rolling wants for a grandchild. Still other sims roll no grandchildren wants at all, being obsessed with their career, spouse, or hobbies. So it's all relative and has a lot to do with the sims' environments and previous fulfilled wants.

So I can confirm without a doubt that it is Parties causing this issue for me as some Sims who were not showing bland wants now are. When they attend parties as guests on another lot their wants are blandified and never restored on their own lot no matter what I do. This appears to only happen to Sims in the adult Lifestage and carries on in to the elder stage.

Sorry for the double post again, I tried moving families out and back in yet that didn't resolve the issue. I even loaded up SimPE to see if there was anything that could signify if there were any issues with the sims yet there weren't any. I actually just discovered this thread where the individual who was also a Super Collection player also experienced a very similar issue to me. The circumstances for how it occurred were different but it could be potentially an issue with the game engine itself.

To reiterate what I mentioned in my previous post: the Sims' wants are blandified when they attended parties as guests and never properly restored. I know this for a fact as I had a couple who were not affected by this issue yet and still rolling interesting wants on their own lot (i.e. rolling wants to perform romantic interactions with their spouse when they woke up and interact with their child - I have also attached screenshots for reference of the wants from a fairly fresh CAS couple that I just added to my rotation). After attending the party, this was no longer the case and it was obvious that those wants would not roll any more. Only some specifically geared towards their aspiration, owning instruments (as I don't have the mod that removes them), and the occasional generic target wants. I have attached a screenshot of how I was aware for reference (see the blonde-haired male sim), I find the skill want oddly notable for this issue as its not a "gain a creativity skill point" but "reach creativity level 1". From what I read, the game rolls more wants geared to ones previously fulfilled, so now I'm wondering if there is something that wiping their SWAF data somehow or if they are being wiped to some aspiration-related reference state.

I did check the SWAF data for another sim affected though, one of the Family sims in the screenshots above, and nothing seemed unusual as he was rolling generic wants for a very long time. Those elder male family sims have married adult children and are grandparents yet those triggers never affected their wants. The one thing I should note is that his wife was rolling have a baby wants within the 3 days before aging to an elder even though Pescado's updated wfsanity should have prevented that (or there is possibly some mod conflict).

So I reached out to Aspyr Support after my previous post here and they responded to my ticket this past Friday. I sent them my Mac System Report and more details regarding my issue and they replied to me today saying that its a bug related to Lifetime Wants. The link they attached was for the Batbox over at MATY. (See attached screenshots below)

While waiting for their response I have already reinstalled the game and the issue still emerged in my Test Hood with a townie Knowledge-aspiration Sim that I had added to the family. They only roll repetitive romantic target-related wants for their spouse (yet nothing else) and I even mentioned that in my second reply to support. I am certain that this sim will eventually start rolling bland wants (i.e. eventually some skill-related wants, yet nothing else again) if they were to appear on another lot which includes community lots. This situation is sort-of similar to that other thread I linked earlier in this discussion, as he never rolled the want to get Married or Have a Baby, yet his wife, a CAS-generated Fortune Sim did. I have also not yet tested if having a toddler/child would change how his wants roll (i.e. Toddler Skills and Private School wants common for Knowledge sims).

Under the advice from @Kestrellyn, I replaced the wantstrees.package in my Bon Voyage>TSData>Res>Wants folder with a copy of hers from UC to see if it made any difference. I believe it requires more testing but I had another townie Knowledge Sim join the family in my Test Hood and he was rolling regular aspiration related wants. This was also after having fully reinstalled the game. Again, I did not test with a toddler/child on the lot so I'm unable to pinpoint exactly where or how this blandification is occurring. I have been extensively logging wants in my regular hood now since noticing this issue and have been taking screenshots of every Sims' wants panel when I first load the lot and I consistently see the bland target-less wants that rarely refresh. I'm aware that there is no restoration to my Sims' individual wants but I do notice some anomalies. One Family elder sim rolled the target less want to "Play with baby" and "Hold baby" when their grandchild was born on another lot. I am aware that usually these elder Family Sims will roll the want to play with the specific baby without meeting them yet it appears that something is borked up here. I have once seen those baby wants for another elder Family Sim in the same situation (who was not blandified as they never attended all the parties in my hood) so they have also rolled once in my game.

I still have thrown some parties as I figured most of the Sims in my neighbourhood are lost, the majority of the time is actually having Toga parties at my frats in university as it's a want that often rolls. I am now wondering if that has anything to do with it as I usually first start noticing the bland wants once Sims reach the young adult Lifestage. This could also be related to loading as a visitor on a lot or on a community lot as well as I have the one CAS couple that I have been monitoring closely (who I have not invited to any parties - screenshotted in my previous post), and they are still rolling romantic target-based wants for their spouse without prompt (like completing a bland "talk to"). However, they did not roll any wants to teach their toddlers the skills even though one of the Sims is a Family Sim. This sim also does not roll any other family sim wants like "child gets A+ on report card" nor "child is overachiever" though as well. Basically, they still roll wants to interact with each other completely on their own (when they wake up, come home from work, etc.), most other couples in my neighbourhood will only roll these wants after completing the initial "talk to Sim" want.

In sum, this is a dump of my observations so far regarding this issue and I'm aware that an update will be released soon as the Sims 2 Super Collection is currently incompatible with the new Apple M1 chip.

In regards to the recently communication from Aspyr support, I'm wondering:
• Is this a bug actually related to Lifetime Wants? If so, its only on the updated Mac port? Is this bug completely unrelated? This issue was/is present with Sims who's LTW's were never altered or fulfilled.

For the MTS community I'm wondering:
• Based on Aspyr Support's response recommending the Batbox (which I find genuinely surprising), is there an option I need to use here to fix this? I did recently delete gossip from dead Sims, though I don't think that has any connection to this issue whatsoever. Likewise, I was under the impression that cycling through LTWs was completely safe. I have also downloaded Squinge's Any LTW for all aspirations (EP4 version). Should I clear all gossip for my entire neighbourhood?
• Is it possible to restore a Sim's personal wantstree to a backed up previous iteration in SimPE? I could probably try this for some other CAS couples (they're children are lost though)?
• Should I consider replacing all the packages located in my TSData>Res>Wants folders for every expansion pack with ones from UC? It's very likely that Aspyr borked these up somehow? Or do I only need those for Bon Voyage only?
• Connected to my point above, are those game file packages the only ones that affect wants? Is this the only location I should be checking?
• Should I look anywhere else in SimPE for further information? Are there any guides out there that could help me identify key information that I should be looking for?
• Furthermore, is it possible to force in certain wants for my Sims using SimPE? Would they stick (i.e. Masterpiece wants, or Grandchildren wants)? Is this dangerous?
• Would removing BO's No Sim Loaded potentially change anything? I actually replaced his version with midge's modified version.

Thanks for reading my post and I appreciate any feedback I receive on this issue. I'm aware that I will likely need to create a completely Vanilla & CC-free hood and see if I am able to replicate this issue once more.

Have you actually played with a fresh world in a vanilla game? From what you are saying you are using quite a few mods (and swapping them in and out), so it's hard to say if this is a game bug.

From what I can see, the problem is that wants which should ordinarily roll with a subject roll without one instead, which is a problem with wants trees, and not something that any mod or CC can affect unless it involves replacing WantTrees.package with a custom version, which I don't think trambling has done. Certainly, this is I think the only way you can get the "play with baby" want with no subject after the birth of a grandchild. So I don't think it's likely to be an issue with CC. I also don't think it has anything to do with parties, or sims loading on lots as visitors, or any of that. I think there might be something wrong with Super Collection's WantTrees.package, given that apparently other people with the Super Collection have reported similar things in the past.