With all those expansions, we really need more than two whims now... With Seasons, we pretty much always have a whim dedicated to a seasonal activity at this point... We have whims related to pets, skills, work/homework, activities... it's just a bit silly that a foodie Sim would almost never roll a whim to eat excellent food, or a scholar Sim a will to gain a skill point, or a social Sim a will to meet friends...
Ideally, the whole thing should be overhauled (IMO), but that would be better than nothing...
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Our Sims randomly get these negative moodlets if they do not do a certain activity corresponding to their traits. For instance, an athletic Sim, will randomly get a negative moodlet informing us they haven’t exercised in awhile. I think the first step to fixing whims would be to have these various activities show up as whims, so we may know before that negative moodlet arises.
They have made changes to ensure whims are shown based on the environment of our Sim, which I think is great — I hope they can improve it so it updates based on the environment of our Sim faster.
I give my sims a washer and dryer, they want a wash tub. So I delete the washer and dryer, give them a wash tub, and now they want a washer and dryer. I get it. They want both. Why?
Sims want a hot tub. A pool that's at least 1x1. These are things that...maybe not every sim should want, depending on traits. And yeah, sometimes they do roll whims unique to their traits, but I think there should be more trait whims and less shared whims. Otherwise, it's just another thing detracting from the point of traits.
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It certainly does.
I want a thought bubble dedicated to trait related whims, so you always have their personality coming through.
Emotions have a dedicated whim bubble. The other could be Skills/object/environment/misc. related whims. They could add a fourth bubble to split that one up.
I only pay attention to moodlets anyway.
Every time I see posts about the whim system I make a link to a post I wrote several months ago about how the whim system might be overhauled in such a way as to please a variety of players.
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I remember in TS3 when I had my sim at university, they'd get whims to skinny dip in the pool for example. They never wanted to do it at home in their own pool, but at university it was something fun and crazy so they as young adults in college wanted to go all the way and do it! You could see there was a lot of thought behind the wishes sims would get. Now it's completely random and that's why I don't pay attention to whims at all, and when I want to buy one of the special traits I just cheat aspiration points instead of having my sim buy a bunch of objects she doesn't need just because she rolled a whim to do so.
I liked that they added a vegetarian trait, I also like the jealous trait but when I played with it, it was so annoying because they constantly pined over their partner. That may have changed now, but I do like that they added that specific trait.
Pet balls, too. They want a billion pet balls.
I do think the whim system needs a big ol' overhaul. It was never great, even in the beginning, but it's extra doofy now. It could be a way to reflect a sim's personality more - and sometimes it is! - but a lot of the time it's just kind of white noise.
I DO like how whims help get rewards points (I really aim to get the need decreasing ones asap, and use whims for that too). It should just really be related to aspiration, traits, weather to some extent, but really, once they've built a snowman, maybe they should be happy with their current snowman instead of wanting to build another one 5 minutes later... and why do Sims who don't care for pets even want to buy pet balls anyway?
Buy pool
Buy dishwasher
Buy puppet theatre
Buy pet bed
Buy pet ball
Do laundry (weirdly enough it’s children that seem to get this the most)
Cook group meal
Buy instrument (even if you have every instrument)
Buy washer
Buy drier
Buy wash tub
Even my vampire sim gets whims to eat popcorn in certain moods.
Wishes and wants were not that repetitive in previous games and actually made sense to each sim.
The UI is also something that could improved I think. The whims are fairly small and not always distinguable at first glance. The reward store (and all the other store that use the same UI) isn't that user friendly : you can't see the bonuses you already have vs the ones you don't have enough points for without going with your mouse over each button.
Yup. I second all of this.
My family Sims keep wanting to buy kids toys—even though there are about a dozen toys all around the house, lol. I can’t even...
I’m pretty much ignoring most whims (except maybe some emotions-based ones) and mostly focusing on the Needs bars and moodlets.
(She/her)