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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 26th Aug 2014 at 9:07 PM
Premade families hobby interests - does everybody has it same way or is it just my game?
Edit: Sorry I didn't realize there is The Sims 2 Help section, I didn't see it in categories listed. Forgive my noobness. Can it be moved to the right place?

Sims background stories and predestined hobbies don't seem to make any sense in most of the cases. Here is few examples that I can remember right now, but it seems to be exactly the same in all the cases:

Mary Sue Pleasant = biography says she enjoyed pottery when she still had time. Predestined hobby - can't remember what it was (possibly music and dance) but it had nothing to do with pottery.

Jennifer Burb = wanted to be football star but doesn't have slightest interest to sports or corresponding Lifetime wish. She seems to love dancing instead.

Ottomas father = told to be sport fanatic who wants all his kids be athletes yet he got no interest to sports at all.

Ottomas oldest son = eagerly wants to be rock musician even his family might not like that, yet he isn't interested about music

Darren Dreamer = doesn't like painting (why did he want to make it his career?) has had troubles to make money with it and is told to love it ... no interest to painting at all

And there is young woman in one of premade neighbourhoods (I think it's the Seasons one), who passionate wants to write for her job. Yet she isn't interested about literature at all

.... and endless other examples

One example would still make sense since people can change and/or have various interests or reasons why they pursue something, but I meet the same thing in every single household I load. Only John Burbs predestined hobby as nature loving sim makes any sense at all out of all the sims I loaded and checked (he used to take care of his parents garden).

Now I would want to know few things:

1. Does everybody have it similar in their games (no connection between background story, life time wishes and sims interests at all)
2. Are premade sims predestined hobbies still the same in each installation or do they get randomized
3. I'm playing uber megahood (all neighbourhoods in one) which is made by Hysterical Paroxysm and I have deleted my original The Sims 2 neighbourhoods so I can't check if base game has it same way, is this connected to that?
Mad Poster
#2 Old 26th Aug 2014 at 9:35 PM
You're in the right place; the Help section is for technical questions. These are gameplay questions.

Sims - including premades - are created with all the features available for the configuration under which they were created, and are updated (or in some cases, not) when a new EP is added. How these are added varies with the feature.

Aspirations come with base game, but Turn ons/offs, Lifetime Wants, and One True Hobbies were added with EPs. Turn-ons/offs are rolled randomly when a sim grows to adolescence, or selected by the player on creation or growing up; so sims who were created without them are assigned them randomly when their households become active. (If you play Pleasantview, and Cassandra meets Don on his lot, she does not have turn-ons/offs yet; so when you subsequently play Cassandra's lot, her chemistry with Don may well have changed significantly.) Lifetime Wants are rolled randomly by the game, even for sims created in CAS, so they are also rolled randomly for the premades. One True Hobby, however, is determined by distribution of personality points; and the people in charge of designing the system do not appear to have consulted the biographies and personalities of existing premades when deciding which point distributions would trigger which hobbies. I have also found that sims I created in CAS before I got FT were never assigned OTHs; but sims who were born in game suddenly had them when I added FT.

So some things are consistent and some are not. Don Lothario will always be a Romance sim; he may want 20 lovers, or to be a Celebrity Chef; and be turned on by any combination of traits, in different games. David Ottomas, who shipped with Seasons, will always start the game as a Popularity sim with a dream of Rock Godhood and turn-ons for fitness and cologne. Tank Grunt will always have an OTH of science, but his turn-ons and LTW will vary.

Biographies, especially for the base game premades, were written without any knowledge of what would be added later, and often refer to desires and professions that had no existence in the game at the time of writing. Some of the biographies are making story points (Circe Beaker and the number of ways she knows how to make someone scream); others are written more casually and don't mean anything in particular unless the player makes them mean something. (Jill Smith and her dreams of dolphins can be given a career in Oceanography, if you add the right EPs.)

Fortunately, you can rewrite biographies at will; you can reroll Lifetime Wants with the batbox or one of a number of editing tools; and you can use in-game tools, mods, or the testingcheats to change One True Hobby, turn-ons/offs; even starsigns and personality points, until you get something that makes sense to you.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#3 Old 26th Aug 2014 at 9:43 PM
Most of those sims you mention came with the base game before hobbies were introduced. Hobbies simply roll randomly. You need to set them to what you want. Simwardrobe hobby selector is the easy way to do it. Use the Bat box, simblender or other method to roll LTW.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#4 Old 26th Aug 2014 at 9:57 PM
The batbox and the simblender will also set hobbies. For the pre-Freetime premades, I prefer to set the hobbies to match the bios. Some of the hobbies do make sense--John Burb has nature, Lilith Pleasant has sports.

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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#5 Old 26th Aug 2014 at 10:02 PM
Default Peni Griffin <3
Thank you both (and also the third poster who wrote while I was writing)! I was so happy to find answers.
Actually problem wasn't that I wouldn't know how to change any of those by "cheating" in game, but every time I use codes or hacked objects to alter something in game, I want to have a good reason to it so it's rather a fix than actual cheating. And I want everything make sense in premade families. I never arrange my game way that wouldn't make any sense given each characters personality and biography (if I for example want crazy romance sim, I don't give poor Cassandra Goth complete makeover and ask her to perform romantic actions on everybody, I either pick that crazy Caliente redhead whose name I can't remember or create new sim).
Peni Griffin helped me heal from massive annoyment of many months by telling me it actually has connection to personality - at least something makes sense here, else it would have bugged me really bad. And information about it having nothing to do with premade characters original design also helps because now I can simply fix those predestined hobbies without feeling weird about it.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#6 Old 26th Aug 2014 at 10:12 PM
We can assure you it is in no way cheating. The game coding has no idea what the personality or bio's of the sims are, it simply does a random roll. Born in sims it might have some connection to personality, but townies and pre-mades get whatever. Which is how when I married in Ross Bear the bugler he came with a sweet personally and wanted to be head of the SCIA, you couldn't plan a criminals personality worse. It isn't done with any forethought or plan. You the player will need to determine the sims personality and backstory and modded items are the easiest way or doing that. Cheating is relative; If the sim you are setting up is supposed to be rich and owns half the town it still isn't cheating to set that up. At the same time a sim who is homeless would be more realistic to have nearly all of his 20,000 that he comes with taken away. Decide who your sims are and then play to that.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#7 Old 26th Aug 2014 at 11:19 PM
Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
We can assure you it is in no way cheating. The game coding has no idea what the personality or bio's of the sims are, it simply does a random roll. Born in sims it might have some connection to personality, but townies and pre-mades get whatever. Which is how when I married in Ross Bear the bugler he came with a sweet personally and wanted to be head of the SCIA, you couldn't plan a criminals personality worse. It isn't done with any forethought or plan. You the player will need to determine the sims personality and backstory and modded items are the easiest way or doing that. Cheating is relative; If the sim you are setting up is supposed to be rich and owns half the town it still isn't cheating to set that up. At the same time a sim who is homeless would be more realistic to have nearly all of his 20,000 that he comes with taken away. Decide who your sims are and then play to that.


Well I do fix it way you said for premades and make my own sims their backstories I just don't want to alter too much ones who already have their backstory because I like it more to play premades how they are intented (there is still choices to make) and sims I made much more creative Combination of those two different playstyles is best imo ^^ and would break my heart notice I did something "wrong", this can be difficult to explain... Thank you for your opinion I tend to take poor premade sims their extra cash away and it's not like I never cheated Armand DeBateau more money (since the theme in his game isn't lacking money)
Mad Poster
#8 Old 27th Aug 2014 at 7:06 AM
Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
Ross Bear the bugler


He just wanted to play his bugle, but the game only offered violins and pianos.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#9 Old 27th Aug 2014 at 7:27 AM
That was my spell check that changed that! Maybe they can get together and form a band. :P

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#10 Old 27th Aug 2014 at 1:28 PM
Hobbies don't roll randomly; they are connected to interests and personality. So it's likely that pre-freetime premades will have the same OTH across different games, unless they are on the cusp of 2 or 3 different ones. There's a guide somewhere around, probably at MATY.

Check out my thoughts on Psymchology (Sim Psychology) - latest post is on the main six aspirations.
Mad Poster
#11 Old 27th Aug 2014 at 3:32 PM
For some of the premades, you could change them to reflect their interests, if they don't already have them set as a hobby-because most of the time they are set by personality points.
Field Researcher
#12 Old 27th Aug 2014 at 4:54 PM
As others have already said, most of these things have been added in different expansions and therefore aren't connected to each other. There are various ways to change them however you see fit. There are also hacks that make them be assigned differently - for example, there's a LTW hack by Pescado at MATY that, among other things, takes the sim's personality and interest points into consideration. That way, you won't get a very lazy sim who wants to be an athlete, or a sim with ten nice points who wants to be a criminal, or one with no interest in food who wants to be a chef.

Personally, I rather like that LTWs don't necessarily match with hobbies.Hobbies are meant to be about what you do in your free time - they even came with Free Time. Just because someone wants to be a doctor doesn't mean they can't enjoy painting or pottery, and not everyone who likes to cook has to dream of being a famous chef.

Also, sometimes the way the pre-made bios can clash with randomly assigned LTWs is simply hilarious. I think the best one I ever saw was Loki Beaker with the LTW to be a World Famous Ballet Dancer...
Undead Molten Llama
#13 Old 27th Aug 2014 at 8:44 PM
I agree with Felicia1066 that I don't necessarily feel a need to connect one's hobby with one's profession. I mean, I'm a musician by profession, so in my free time I generally don't want to do anything music-related, unless it's something like jamming with friends, which is more of a social activity than a "music" activity, anyway. In my free time, I like to do things like riding my horse or hunting for bugs or playing my silly Sims game. So, I don't see why it should be any different for my Sims.

For sort of the same reason, I like personalities and LTWs that disconnect. Like, I like a super-shy (or super-mean) Sim who dreams of being popular and having 20 best friends. This is why I roll my aspirations randomly for CAS and born-in-game Sims and have a hack that makes any LTW available for any aspiration. You get some really nice variety that way. Well, IMO, anyway.

Anyway, simsfreq is correct that OTHs are not generated randomly at all. Here's a chart of some info about the hobbies that also includes the factors that affect how the game assigns them: http://www.snootysims.com/thesims2index.php?id=hobbies Of course, like others have said, you can easily change them to suit your own needs.

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Mad Poster
#14 Old 27th Aug 2014 at 9:59 PM
I play hobbies both ways. Sometimes their actual and/or dream job is not connected at all to their hobby, and they spend their free time pursuing it, and some sims get to make a living out of doing the thing that they love the most.

Check out my thoughts on Psymchology (Sim Psychology) - latest post is on the main six aspirations.
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#15 Old 28th Aug 2014 at 11:28 AM Last edited by Acadia : 30th Aug 2014 at 11:35 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by Felicia1066
As others have already said, most of these things have been added in different expansions and therefore aren't connected to each other. There are various ways to change them however you see fit. There are also hacks that make them be assigned differently - for example, there's a LTW hack by Pescado at MATY that, among other things, takes the sim's personality and interest points into consideration. That way, you won't get a very lazy sim who wants to be an athlete, or a sim with ten nice points who wants to be a criminal, or one with no interest in food who wants to be a chef.

Personally, I rather like that LTWs don't necessarily match with hobbies.Hobbies are meant to be about what you do in your free time - they even came with Free Time. Just because someone wants to be a doctor doesn't mean they can't enjoy painting or pottery, and not everyone who likes to cook has to dream of being a famous chef.

Also, sometimes the way the pre-made bios can clash with randomly assigned LTWs is simply hilarious. I think the best one I ever saw was Loki Beaker with the LTW to be a World Famous Ballet Dancer...


Well this thread wasn't originally about changing hobby to match their work, but match their biography... Ottomas father is not athlete - he is actually teaching for his living - but according his biography he should have hobby interest to sports. If it was set correctly, then he would be a teacher who watches sports at free time - not a teacher who teaches at free time... Also Darren is told to absolutely love painting and he haven't got a job of it yet, we could with a good reason suppose he loves to spend lot of time to that.

Oh Peni Griffin just proved me noob. Yes you are right he is journalist. Still I don't see enough sports fanatic in him, but maybe it's okay... Maybe he then wants to spend his free time to nature instead.
Mad Poster
#16 Old 28th Aug 2014 at 1:02 PM
Peter's not a teacher; Samantha is. Peter is a sports journalist, which makes perfect sense with his bio. Since Peter never has time for a hobby, I never notice what his OTH is...

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Field Researcher
#17 Old 28th Aug 2014 at 4:47 PM
I think Peter's hobby is nature. I could wrestle that around in my head to being something about animal instincts (romance sim, and sports fan). But also, the bio says he wants his kids to be athletes - that doesn't have to mean he himself can't enjoy gardening, or watching nature programs on TV before The Big Game starts, or whatever. Maybe he's a wannabe soccer dad. Maybe he wants his children to succeed where he didn't. Maybe it's about them not settling down into suburban family life right away like he did. Maybe he just wants the bragging rights. People can have more than one interest, they can be complex, and I tend to think apparent contradictions make sims more interesting. (Well, except when it's a pleasure seeker with no playful points, which is just annoying, or as I said before, an extremely nice sim who wants to be a criminal mastermind. A shy sim wanting to be popular I can understand, it's about that "if I was different my life would be better" fantasy, but some things I just can't wrap my mind around.)
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