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Rank the aspirations!

LogicallyironicLogicallyironic Posts: 137 Member
edited April 2021 in The Sims 2
Hi all,

Just for fun, rank your favorite to least favorite aspirations! Provide reasons if you feel compelled.

My personal ranking:
1. Romance - I love playing as romance sims because it's so chaotic and exciting. Granted, I don't play romance sims too often, but I always have a ton of fun and become quite attached to my sims with this aspiration because there's always tea. I do wish romance townies and premades were a little more rare though.

2. Knowledge and Family (Tie) - I usually end up playing a family, and having a very caring parent/grandparent figure is so endearing and I love watching them feel happy when their children move through the life milestones. It's definitely the cutest aspiration. Knowledge sims are cool just because they're so interesting. Unfortunately my male knowledge sims ALWAYS end up pregnant, but it's so funny watching them get excited by ghosts and aliens while all the other sims are going through a crisis over it lol

3. Pleasure - This would probably be my IRL aspiration. It's a bit shallow and the constant date wants are a little exhausting, but it's still fun.

4. Popularity - I never feel compelled to make my sims be popularity. It feels like a cycle of meeting sims, making friends, wanting more friends, so on and so on. I think it's the og "party animal" aspiration, but I usually opt for pleasure instead


Let me know your thoughts!

edit: I just realized I forgot fortune, which is strange because my favorite premade (Dina Caliente, the icon herself) is a fortune sim. I'd probably put it at 3 despite forgetting it!
Post edited by Logicallyironic on

Comments

  • Lucy_HenleyLucy_Henley Posts: 2,943 Member
    I tend to be a real “happy families” type of player, so I don’t really create Romance Sims. Plus it can take a while for a Sim to get a romantic relationship going with one Sim let alone several! But I can see the appeal.
    My Sims are usually Family, Knowledge or Popularity.

    I don’t know if I can really “rank” them as such! It’s always funny when a Family Sim rolls the “have 10 children” want because I just go “hahaha no, you WILL go insane”. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Sim get abducted and have an alien baby unless I’ve played with the Curious family, although I have sometimes used the Tombstone of Life and Death to make a Sim alien pregnant in that way.

    I also pay more attention to the specific Lifetime Want rather than the overall aspiration. I can easily change the LTW too.
  • LogicallyironicLogicallyironic Posts: 137 Member
    I don’t think I’ve ever had a Sim get abducted and have an alien baby unless I’ve played with the Curious family, although I have sometimes used the Tombstone of Life and Death to make a Sim alien pregnant in that way.

    It's honestly my own fault. I almost always complete the reward tree for the aspiration, so my knowledge sims end up with Summon Aliens. I'm not sure if just this reward being added vastly increases the chance of abduction even when the sim is just stargazing, the spike in the likelihood of being abducted again after each time is just that powerful, or my luck is just weird. I used summon aliens ONCE, and if I hadn't intervened since then my sim would've had 4 alien babies by now instead of 2.
  • OldeseadoggeOldeseadogge Posts: 4,973 Member
    Knowledge #1, romance is the cellar dweller, the others lumped in the middle.
  • Rflong7Rflong7 Posts: 36,586 Member
    Hi :mrgreen:

    My favorite order...

    1. Fortune. I love how hard they work and the one's I've played enjoy their families, too

    2. I would say Pleasure. I like some slackers, too. They make great teens, imo.

    My least is Family. They seem to be more about having the baby and then making friends then actually the family... Some are Really good family but not all Sims so I guess it's a lot to do with their personality.

    My favorite combination is Fortune/Knowledge.
  • ecoterseyecotersey Posts: 2 New Member
    1. Knowledge - it's just ME, it's my fav-fav-fav aspiration that I give to my favourite Sims. I really like smart Sims, I guess.
    2. Pleasure - because it's a bit of a crappy aspiration with very low rewards for Wants :D So because it's an underdog, I put it as second on my personal list, hahaha
    3. Popularity - because it's got good highly-rewarded Wants, like publishing a book or selling a masterpiece, so it's a good aspiration. Though
    4. Family-oriented - it just seems so dull to me... like, how many babies can you have? I don't want all my Sims to have like eight kids, because then I'd have to play with them all... that's how I play - I like to take care of every Sim in the world.
    5. Romantic - because it's wicked in my opinion haha
    6. Money - I don't like greediness...
  • garapoesgarapoes Posts: 422 Member
    1 Romance because it brings so much chaos and I like the wants that come with it
    2 Family because this changes a lot in the game with marriage and kids
    3 Fortune because you keep buying new items for you Sims and the house will look different
    4 Popularity I guess is okay
    5 Knowledge because it's kinda boring
    6 Pleasure I never use this aspiration

    I like to keep some sort of balance in my game with the number of specific aspirations and when a child ages up I always look at the friends what their aspiration should me. For example no friends = knowledge or fortune, female child with male friends = romance, female child with 1 male friend is family etc.
    English is not my first language so sorry if I make any mistakes!
  • WhatCobblersWhatCobblers Posts: 2,748 Member
    edited May 2021
    Deleted because wrong thread. Sorry!
    Post edited by WhatCobblers on
  • Lucy_HenleyLucy_Henley Posts: 2,943 Member
    The ones I use the most are the Creative aspirations, such as Writer or Painter. I enjoy making Sims paint from reference and inventing books for my author Sims to write. I also like that sims can interview each other and write articles.
    Another near the top for me is the Chief of Mischief, though I mainly pick it for personality because I like making dastardly sims. 😁
    I use Knowledge, Friendship and the occult aspirations such as Spellcraft and Sorcery a fair bit too.
    Haven't really played through many of the others.

    This is a thread about the Sims 2 aspirations.
  • DevalaousDevalaous Posts: 1,286 Member
    Clearly Grilled Cheese is the best aspiration.
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  • SimmingalSimmingal Posts: 8,888 Member
    edited May 2021
    Well it has been a veery long time since i played sims 2

    but i think this is how i unintendedly ranked the aspirations in ts2 cause its pretty much the order from most used to least used

    1.Knowledge
    -occults and skill building just comes to me naturally so i often chose this aspiration as easy way for my sims to have platinum lives
    2. Family
    - now the occult loving family would still need to become big big family so this also suited that and i felt it quite easy to keep my sims happy
    3. Romance
    -but then i wanted drama and what is more drama than romance sims so yes those were the pick 3 usually combined with knowledge and family sims ;)
    (after this point honestly i probably didn't even ever play these aspirations cause no recollection)

    5. Fortune
    - fine but also like nah cause id rather take the romance aspiration "marry a rich sim" route to wealth
    6. Popularity
    - I'm very much loner myself so it feels bit unnatural for me to go for this one
    7. Pleasure
    -forgot it exists

    but in the end it would probably be more fun to flip the order and play things i have not played with now if I were to play ts2 again cause i mean dang i missed whole loads of things there :sweat_smile:
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  • Erja888Erja888 Posts: 4,838 Member
    edited May 2021
    1 Family - Most of the time my Sims have at least one child, some end up with more than eight!
    2 Knowledge - Who doesn't like to know stuff - especially basic cooking so you don't burn down the house?!
    3 Popularity - Having friends makes life more interesting, doesn't it?
    4 Fortune - You are born and you die. At least spend the time inbetween in a big nice house.
    5 Pleasure - Some Sims enjoy life that way as some people do. Not my personal choice, but good for university students.
    6 Romance - This is just for special Sims. Yes, I'm looking at you Don!
    7 Grilled Cheese - I tried it once.
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  • ElisdreamElisdream Posts: 295 Member
    Family! I'm trying to fulfill tge 10 children eant with my current family! 👪
  • Lucy_HenleyLucy_Henley Posts: 2,943 Member
    I did have one family have ten kids. I think they were all conceived with the help of the Tombstone of Life and Death. I believe they were five sets of twins, with the first set being alien babies and I think one of the other sets was too. Literally all I remember about the family is that one of the first set of twins was called Billie. It was YEARS ago now.
  • OugonmusouOugonmusou Posts: 33 Member
    My personal ranking for each Sims 2 aspirations:

    1) Family - This is easily one of my favourite aspirations because my Sims 2 gameplay will solely revolve around forming families and their relationships with family members. Though I do spice it up a little with giving them either a Fortune/Knowledge sub that compliments them well based on personality.

    2) Knowledge - Mostly because Knowledge sims remind me a bit of myself in real life because I love learning although they can get repetitive real quick and I don't really want to always fulfill skill related wants so I will likely add a sub aspiration to make their wants more varied.

    3) Grilled Cheese - This aspiration is supposed to be a joke but I kinda like the charm of your Sims going bananas and losing their minds to focus on their love for Grilled Cheese. Although Grilled Cheese is a good sub aspiration to make for some funny Sims

    4) Fortune - I'd rank this higher if they weren't so obsessed with buying stuff more than they even need. Like chill with the spending?

    5) Popularity/Pleasure - These two aspirations are fun if you're playing with teenage sims but not ideal for later life stages but I do enjoy them nonetheless, I will most likely give them a sub aspiration to balance them more in terms of their wants and life goals

    6) Romance - It's not that I hate them but all their wants seem to revolve around WooHoo which can be tedious for long gameplays but hey they're pretty fun to spice up neighborhoods with because of the drama they cause by just existing. I will definitely give them sub aspirations to round them out a bit more so they're not always DTF
    I am just a simple Sims 2 lore addict
  • EricasFreePlayEricasFreePlay Posts: 849 Member
    Just found this thread. I assign Sims a Secondary Aspiration because I have the UC which includes FreeTime which gives the ability for Sims to have a Secondary Aspiration. My rank is below.:

    1) Tie between Family/Knowledge. I usually assign one or the other in college with the YA CAS if I am making a Simself. These are the easiest Sims to find future spouses for. They also want to pass on their knowledge, have big families and help raise kids and grandkids.
    2) Popularity. This is easy for those Sims who need a lot of friends for their career.
    3) Fortune. These Sims love finding out if they won scholarships (as Teens before going to college) and getting good grades for the grants every Semester. Then they love getting promotions at work and buying new objects to keep their needs and skills up for future promotions.
    4) Grilled Cheese. This is great for learning to cook but eating grilled cheese sandwiches all the time gets boring.
    5) Tie for Romance/Pleasure. I do not like these aspirations at all. I prefer to have my Sims be faithful to the one they fall in love with while in college.
  • ignominiusrexignominiusrex Posts: 2,680 Member
    1 Knowledge: so much fun, and I love the alien baby thing and everything that goes with being rewarded for skill building and knowledge. This is the most "me" aspiration in the game and I love playing sims that have it! They tend to do well at their careers due to so much skill building, and do well at getting high-paying careers also.

    2 Fortune: they are career driven, so position themselves well enough to live a good fun life (so long as they don't then have a bunch of kids). I also love that even as teens, they can make money as financial advisors on the PC.

    3 Romance: that's just good clean fun! Get those wild oats sown before, or instead of, settling down!

    4 Grilled Cheese: I love grilled cheese too, though I have gotten jaded on it in real life, but it's a good all-purpose "filler" aspiration for when you don't want to have your sim so pigeonholed.

    5 Family: I like that you get high rewards for engagement, marrying, and so on, but hate that it makes sims want to have way too many kids. I also recently found out how awful some of the Life Wants that go with it, are: like having to marry off six kids?! Holy cow, never again.

    6 Pleasure: it sounds good by the description, but it winds up being an endless string of penny-ante boring things with low rewards, plus higher-reward items that are impossible to achieve, like "have a dream date". Dates are notoriously difficult to have go well, in my game at least.

    7 Popularity: exhausting! I'm an introvert and having to make and maintain so many friendships is an awful grind, in game and out. And it never ends, you just have to keep working at making and maintaining friendships every waking hour. Such a drag!
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  • JayR247JayR247 Posts: 26 Member
    1. Family - I tend to play big families and I love seeing how my sims kids look… so they end up having a lot. Love having close knit families too, cousins, aunties, uncles..etc.

    2. Romance - Because I live for drama and chaos. My poor family sims are forever getting their hearts broken. I play with ACR so it’s always a fun time.

    3. Knowledge - I just enjoy my sims learning things and this gives me excuses to incorporate the Supernatural.

    4. Fortune - They’re okay, hardworking and easy to please. Don’t do much for me.

    5. Popularity - Socialising is draining for me in the sims as it is in real life.

    6. Pleasure - Too much like popularity and just isn’t for me… even though I’d probably be a Pleasure sim if I was a sim :D
  • sims2nostalgiasims2nostalgia Posts: 5 New Member
    1. Knowledge - I like that their lifetime aspiration goals are somewhat reasonable (not having 20 woohoos or lovers etc), because I like to fulfill them. And I generelly think the gameplay is more exciting with knowdledge-ambitious sims.

    2. Family - Again because their wants and fears are reasonable, and relatively easy to fulfull. I also like the classical gameplay where the game is practically a dollhouse with a nuclear family.

    3. Fortune - Funny to play with because the sims are ambitious. I can totally identify with the wants for material goods too haha

    4. Pleasure - A little bit of everything in my eyes. I only pick this, when I really want to spice things up

    5. Popularity - A bit dull in my eyes, always just evolving around meeting sims, making friends and best friends, and hosting parties

    6. Romance - The sims are impossible to satisfy! I like the drama of it all, but its just too high maintenance for my liking

    7. Grilled cheese sandwiches - Well, even if they eat all the time, they are still unhappy

    :smiley: :smiley:
  • IamJIamJ Posts: 44 Member
    I actually play in a completely different way that doesn’t allow for ranking the aspirations. I figure that most people change their life goals and their priorities and views during their lifetime, and therefor so should the sims. So I use all the aspirations during my sims lifespan.

    When they grow into teens I pick either popularity or romance based on their personalities. I figure the teenage years are usually that wonderful time when everything revolves around either being popular and accepted by your peers and/or being validated romantically and sexually. This is mostly what occupies most teens: friends and boy-/girlfriends.

    At junior year in college the option to change aspiration is offered by the game and I always use it. Halfway through college I figure they’ve grown up some, and have gotten their validation during their teens and first two college years. I then switch to pleasure. I figure this is the time where they just want to have fun, enjoy life: date, party, travel, meet people.

    After college my sims move downtown to apartments. They keep their pleasure aspirations during the first time while they enter entry level positions in their chosen career paths, they work, struggle financially and mostly go out with friends and enjoy the city! After a while as they advance in their careers they start to think of their futures (this is when I imagine they hit their 30’s and it’s time to start acting a little more serious). At this point I use the ReNuYuSenso to change their aspiration to either fortune or family, again depending on their personalities.

    The next stage in life is still to meet someone for a serious relationship, save up money to buy a house and move to one of the subhoods or the main hood and start a family.

    When they age into elders I once again use the ReNuYuSenso to change their aspiration to either family or knowledge, depending on their personality. At this stage spending time with their grandkids and other family members is so important, and also craving to learn new things and do a bunch of stuff they didn’t have time for before. Also just being old and wise from all the life experience.

    So I don’t have favorites amongst aspirations because I use them all during the sims lifespans :-)
  • auroraael14auroraael14 Posts: 988 Member
    edited August 2022
    My favorite are family and knowledge. I tend to gravitate towards those in my own life.
    Next would be fortune. I tend to pair a family sim with a fortune sim.
    I seem to have an abundance of pleasure and romance sims born into my game so it makes for some interesting stories. I don't usually create these sims myself because a lot of sims seem to be born into these aspirations according to their Zodiac signs.
    I use popularity the least in my games. Maybe it's because I'm an introvert in real life and don't really care to always go out and make friends and meet people.
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  • EnkiSchmidtEnkiSchmidt Posts: 5,334 Member
    edited August 2022
    Pleasure
    - I love this simply for the ability to write restaurant guides (that I often headcanon as cookbooks). Even better this unlocks at tier 3 already, so Pleasure can get tacked on as secondary aspiration easily.
    - Pleasure sims love dates and I also love dates for their ability to completely bypass the wants system - one dream date and you're set for some time, so a paired Pleasure sim is extremely easy care.
    - DON'T fulfill their small wants like changing into sleepwear, this will only train them to roll more of them. (I didn't know that for years, but Sims 2 sims apparently are more likely to roll wants you have completed before)

    Romance
    - The better family sims in my opinion. They can learn to roll generic Woohoo [at location] wants instead of Woohoo with x sims, and woohoo being high point wants, these will last them for a while.
    - I just wish romantic relationships gained at college would clear upon graduating just like they do for teens. My college sims are pretty active in this regard, what can lead to way too much drama in their early adult years.

    Knowledge
    - Although I like this one thematically, and even make some athletes Knowledge sims, reasoning this aspiration can also mean that they generally want to excel, I'm not good at the mechanics. The later skillpoint wants are hard to fulfill if not cheesed with eggplant juice or the simvac, and the occult wants sometimes don't fit my setting.

    Fortune
    - The probably cutest thing in the aspiration system is two fortune sims dating and then wanting to buy expensive paintings instead of woohooing as their date's peak.
    - Their rather big downside is that their skill wants for the next promotion tend to clutter their want panel. Try taking a fortune sim on a vacation and they won't get their minds off their work skills in three slots (and the fourth will throw some pesky hobby want, most likely).
    - Edit: Even worse, I just remembered that these skill wants are "Get a point in skill x" wants. "Get a point in skill x" gives a much smaller reward than "Reach skill level x". So if you yearn for your 8th skillpoint, please have the decency to also wish for "Skill level 8" (the way Knowledge sims do)!

    Family
    - Unpaired family sims are a hassle, they always want to flirt with everyone they see. And after getting paired they want to turn into baby factories.
    - The only upside here is that they don't care much about careers as long as they can support their families. They roll career related normal wants, but rarely LTW's, so I'm free to put them into whatever I imagine they'd really want to do, not what the game thinks they want.

    Popularity
    - Relationship management is tedious. End of story.
    - (Like many posters before me I'm not very social in real life either, funny thing is, except for swimming I dislike sports irl, but absolutely enjoy playing with athletic/sporty sims.)

    Grilled Cheese
    - I like watching my sims eat and downloaded a variety of custom foods, so this one is really boring for me. I also dislike the memories getting cluttered with Ate Grilled Cheese ones.
  • EveryDaySimEveryDaySim Posts: 193 Member
    I make Fortune sims the most, because rags to riches is my main style of play. Knowledge sims come second. I tend to not get around to playing the others much; I keep going back to the ones I like most.
  • KendranaKendrana Posts: 4,049 Member
    edited August 2022
    1. Knowledge: Chose this as my favorite mainly because Sims sometimes get wants to become supernatural beings. Learning about everything and being super smart is also pretty cool.

    2. Family: A close second. Seeing what genetics and personalities young Sims end up with is interesting. The genetics system in TS2 is really unique in that it takes in account which hair and eye colors are dominant and recessive from the parents and sometimes grandparents.

    3. Fortune: Working hard and achieving your career goals are both quite enjoyable in the game. They appropriately designed this aspiration around making money. Having your Sims go from being poor to rich makes for good storytelling.

    4. Popularity: Making friends, throwing parties, and being popular is fun at first, but managing all of the relationships gets difficult after a while. Achieving a lifetime want to get 20 best friends isn't exactly easy either.

    5. Pleasure: This aspiration is okay and is somewhat enjoyable at times, but it seems like my Sims get a lot of wants to go downtown and go on dates. Maybe that's the way some people in real life would define pleasure, but I wish they would have made it center a bit more around hobbies and entertainment.

    6. Romance: My biggest complaint is that Sims will basically always fear commitment. The hopeless romantic type of Sims were ignored here and you're basically forced to play the woohoo obsessed type instead. Additionally, trying to achieve some of the lifetime wants related to woohooing or making out with 20 Sims is very difficult; it makes the 20 best friend lifetime want seem like a piece of cake.

    7. Grilled Cheese: This is my least favorite aspiration. It was funny at first, but the humor wore off rather quickly for me. Guess the developers figured they'd punish us for using the ReNuYuSenso Orb too many times. It takes a Sim with an interesting story like Natasha Una for me to be able to stand playing with the aspiration for very long.
  • MelsieYTMelsieYT Posts: 289 Member
    Oh this seems fun!

    Family is probably be my favorite. I love playing a household where it's just this wholesome couple raising their kids (and getting the want to have another baby days after giving birth LOL).

    Knowledge is my second favorite. Having career-oriented sims that want to work on their skills are always fun! They get cool wants that tend to spice up the gameplay.

    Fortune: I prefer Knowledge sims but Fortune isn't too far behind for similar reasons. These sims are career-oriented and usually want to better themselves and their house.

    Popularity & Pleasure: I'm putting these two together because I don't prefer one over the other. It's nice sometimes to have a sim that constantly wants to make friends and go places. It spices up the gameplay and usually leads to drama.

    Romance: I feel bad putting this one at next to last because I do enjoy my romance sims quite a bit! I just prefer family gameplay and sims that actually have wants other than woohooing around with everyone.

    Grilled Cheese: I've never actually played with this one.

  • Lively2011Lively2011 Posts: 2 New Member
    My favorite aspiration would be popularity. I feel this aspiration gives the sim more out of their life they are popular and most sims want to hang out with them. You have a wide variety of things you want to do.
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