Do your sim's whims favor one child over the others? «12...Next Go

pixiejuice

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, or if maybe it has to do with some mod I'm using. I wondered if this happened to anyone else.

ALL of my sim parents have a favorite child. If they have more than one child, they'll favor one of them to an obsessive degree. It seems random which child it is, not having to do with how high the relationship is or who was born first. But their social whims will revolve between their spouse and that one child (or occasionally some hated sim who happened to walk by), over and over again. Never for any of their other children. Even after switching households, and even after closing and reloading the game. It makes me really sad for the other neglected kids, lol!

It seems uniform across my worlds, too. I have dozens of households between all of my worlds, and lots of families. I can’t seem to find any parent anywhere who rolled whims for each of their children equally. I'm hard pressed to find a parent who rolled whims for more than one child at all ever. It's always just their favorite.

The only time I can get the parent to roll a whim for a different child is if they travel to some other neighborhood with one of the other kids where the favored child is not there at all.

Does this happen to anyone else?

ETA: I just tested without mods or CC and all sim parents still had their same favorite child.

feetinstockings

At the start of the game it comes up with quips, one of them is, Your sim has whims but you don't have to follow them.
My sims may want to socialize with one child over another, but I don't allow it, I like my parents to have a high relationship with all their kids. So I direct them to talk to all of them. They do a lot of that while eating, tell a joke to one, ask about school to another. etc.

pixiejuice

feetinstockings wrote: »

Your sim has whims but you don't have to follow them.

Well, yes, of course you can choose to ignore them and play your sims however you think they should be. But the way I like to play, I imagine that the whims represent what my sims are thinking and let that guide my gameplay for them. Otherwise, why have the whims at all? It might be an interesting character detail that one parent happened to have a favorite child, but this is happening to ALL of my parents in every family. When the whims are uniformly broken like this, it kind of spoils the way I like to play.

But I just wondered if this was a bug in only my game or if it happened to everyone?

sillyangel0906

On their own? No. But I always have a favorite, which then becomes their favorite. So as I have them interact more with that child, they get more whims that concentrate on that child.

pixiejuice

@sillyangel0906 that's interesting. I wonder if my previous interactions have forced a favorite. And I wonder if it's reversible. I'll have to spam interactions with one of the other kids and see if it changes anything. (Although I don't recall having any favorites of my own, at least not with these families I've been testing with.)

Erin

I feel like my Sims have been pretty diverse with their whims for their kids. That is seriously odd though. Every single family has a favorite child? That does sound like you have a bug or something. Try interacting with all the kids except the favorite and keep deleting the whims for the favorite child. Maybe that'll cause a shift.

pixiejuice

@Erin I don't favor one child or another in my gameplay, by the way. I do interact with them all equally, and yet my parents still get favorites. If I delete the whims, either a generic whim or a new one for the favorite child will replace it. That's how I noticed the problem. I sat there deleting whims for several minutes and the favored child replaced the deleted whim every time.

Ciarassims

I make my sims love them equally, I don't like having a favourite

MicemSims

Yep, in my legacy family both parents and his siblings favoured Eric, then when he moved out all of their whims revolved around Finn, who is his youngest sibling.

I don't know if it's happening in my other families as I've only been playing my legacy family lately.

MicemSims

Ciarassims wrote: »

I make my sims love them equally, I don't like having a favourite

The OP doesn't mean you having a favourite, but your Sims as indicated by their whims.

SeaDragonSong

Hmm, in my current family, I guess that it would be Daisy, and Cory (second child first son) has/had the lowest level with his parents, even Mortimer and Madyline had higher I think.

simgirl1010

I never noticed as most of the time i just ignore whims but now I'm going to pay more attention and see if it happens.

pixiejuice

As an experiment, I just spent three game days with a family of 5: mom, dad, and three girls, all relationship levels are similar. The mom rolls whims for the youngest and the dad rolls whims for the middle. Neither of them EVER roll whims for the oldest. I spent the 3 days spamming interactions with the parent/child who was NOT the favored one, mostly the oldest child who they never roll whims for, and nothing changed. They kept rolling whims for their favored child, still nobody rolled anything for the oldest one.

To be fair though, each of the girls seemed to have a favored parent that they rolled whims for too, lol!

I don't know what's wrong with my game.

Cement

I feel like they mostly just hound after whoever they talk to often, whoever's closest in proximity in the room they're in, or whoever they talked to recently. Most of my families tend to rotate through their children when it comes to whims, but I do recall one of my favorite couples always rolled whims for interacting with their daughters, never their sons. If it's intended, it's kinda cute I guess. The whole "favorite child" thing. But like several who already posted, I don't often let them stay with favoritism and generally talk to all the kids.

Paigeisin5

It seems the game is assigning favorites on it's own. In a household with two parents and two children, a favored child is assigned his/her favored parent. Then the whims follow that relationship. And often the same holds true with the remaining parent and child in the household. But not always. I have seen households where both parents favored one child over the others if there is more than one child. When this happens I have to wonder if the traits are to blame. Does the parent favor the child that has more of his/her own traits?

In real life we often see the 'Daddy's Little Girl' and the 'Momma's Boy' dynamic in families with two children. I raised five kids on my own and can say this dynamic held true until my kids hit eighteen and that reversed itself. My girls became closer to me and the boys relied more on their father.

This thread has brought up some very good points and deserves more discussion. I am going to play around with the family dynamic and see if there is a connection between traits and favoritism. Is this something that pops up when that Sim child becomes an adult and he/she feels they were not treated equally by a parent? Has anyone noticed that in your game? Legacy players would know more about this then I do. Does the favoritism carry forward once all the children are grown and out on their own?

Thank you, OP, for bringing this up for discussion.

belpita

I honestly never noticed this! But now I'm definitely going to pay closer attention and see if I can see this happening.
I do have one save with a challenge and I think I've noticed that the single mother always favours the oldest child. Interestingly, this child will vary over time, because I move the children out as they grow older. So maybe she just prefers interacting with teens?

Paigeisin5

Keep us posted on what you find, belpita. I have been playing with pre-made families as my created Sims are just now forming romances and becoming engaged. But with the pre-made families I am seeing some favoritism going on. This thread has some real potential.

HowGreatThouArt

I've had that happen with one family. The parents had 3 children and constantly rolled whims for just one of the daughters. Funny thing was that she seemed to be the favorite of everybody in the family. All her siblings were constantly rolling whims to interact with her and not each other.

loubyloulou

Yep! I have definitely seen this a lot lately. I've also noticed that kids favour one parent over the other: in one of my saves, my Sim parents have four kids, and all four of them are obsessed with their dad - the poor mum never gets any attention from her kids

Gruffman

To be honest ... I can't say I never noticed. I, like others have posted, pretty much ignore their whims and they do what I want them to do.

I am actually intrigued by this, as I think it mirrors real life. Some parent/child relationships are just easier, come natural, share the same interests or whatever ... some are harder, some are gender or cultural issues ....

I could see great story telling/inspirational ideas that could come from it. How say, mom and dad favored the son, gave him everything he ever wanted, catered to his every whim, doted on him right and left while their daughter could do nothing right and was largely ignored and how she ended up being self-reliant, strong and successful while her brother ended up being alone, overweight and single playing on a computer in his basement bedroom as he mooched off mom and dad till they died.

loubyloulou

@Gruffman (sorry, I can't quote on this PC so I'm having to tag people instead): yeah I can definitely see some great story-telling potential in this. In the save I mentioned above, the parents favour their middle daughter above the others, so I'm planning to have the younger daughter completely fall out with her parents when she's a teen as she'll blame them for not giving her the attention she needed when she was a child...

monkeypants1

Yes I absolutely let my sims favor one kid over another and it goes the other way too where a kid favors a particular parent. Perfect families are really super boring for me to play and this adds to the drama.

pixiejuice

belpita wrote: »

I honestly never noticed this! But now I'm definitely going to pay closer attention and see if I can see this happening.
I do have one save with a challenge and I think I've noticed that the single mother always favours the oldest child. Interestingly, this child will vary over time, because I move the children out as they grow older. So maybe she just prefers interacting with teens?

This happens because TS4 sims don't roll whims for any sim who isn't loaded on the lot. It's kind of like when I sent my parent and unfavored child to another neighborhood where the favorite child wasn't loaded, then the parent began rolling whims for other children. But only because the favorite child wasn't there. As soon as the favorite child was invited to the lot, the whims revolved around her again.

I'm curious to know, now that your favored child has grown up and moved out, if you invited them back over, would the parent start rolling whims for only them again?

I don't age my sims fast enough to test what happens when they grow up.

pixiejuice

@Gruffman and @loubyloulou I would normally agree about the storytelling potential. I am all about picking out even the slightest things in my game to influence some dramatic story, lol! But it bothers me that it happens to absolutely everyone. I could see some of my families having favorites, but I also want to see some families who favor their children equally and I'm just not seeing that at all. I've been through my whole neighborhood, ~30 households, many of which have children, and I can't find a single parent who will roll alternating whims for each of their children when they're all present on the lot at the same time.

lovebypondside

Yes! I'm glad you pointed this out.

My sim parents will get wishes to socialize with each other and 1 child in the family.

Usually, I find, its like every member of the family is obsessed with that same family member. All the siblings also constantly wish to hang with that 1 sim also.

pixiejuice

lovebypondside wrote: »

Yes! I'm glad you pointed this out.

My sim parents will get wishes to socialize with each other and 1 child in the family.

Usually, I find, its like every member of the family is obsessed with that same family member. All the siblings also constantly wish to hang with that 1 sim also.

Yes, this is another thing that I'm not sure if it's related or not. Even in households where nobody is related or even knows each other (like an apartment-style lot of 8 singles) sometimes they'll all focus on one particular sim to a maddening degree! For no apparent reason at all—I mean, not similar traits, not higher relationships or anything like that. But I have seen this happen in families, too, with parents and siblings.