So, I'm sure it seems as though I had forgotten all about this blog. Truth of the matter is that life was busy and I haven't had the motivation to actually post. I know I said before that life had quieted down, but I was wrong. I'm beginning to realize that life never quiets down.
The goal or plan or whatever you want to call it:
1. More pictures of course.
2. More rambling.
3. Actual playing and storytelling.
4. Technical posts regarding game play.
Today I want to ramble about Traits in Sims 3 vs. Personality in Sims 2. Personally, I enjoyed personality points and aspirations in the Sims 2 a bit better than the trait system in the TS3. With Sims 2 the varied neat, messy, or Family/Romance just felt more entertaining than lets say, a childish natural cook. First, I dislike the childish trait with a passion. If it would have been fleshed out to be similar to the playful Sims 2 trait, that could have been fun.
Instead you have an 80 year old grandmother raising four children, that the moment you turn your back she's playing with the toy cars instead of creating some delicious unique dinner. Now the kids are starving, the toilet is clogged, and you're getting warnings from the social worker. All because the childish trait is overly dominant. Where as if it was a playful personality, the grandmother would at least be interacting with the children in a pillow fight, telling jokes, or harmless pranks. Something useful at least.
Now, that's not to say that I don't enjoy some of the new traits in TS3. I love the green thumb trait along with natural cook for example. Artistic and the genius trait are both very cool. I think they do give depth to a Sim. Some of the other traits available however are completely pointless and don't do much other than for sake of bloating the game. The Daredevil trait for example was a large disappointment for me. Other than the fact they're not scared of much, which is far to similar to the Brave trait, it seems all that it adds is the flavor text "extreme" before anything they do. "Extreme" sleep, "Extreme" shower, "Extreme" walk. That does not help to create an interesting character except in the guise of storytelling. Daredevil doesn't influence a Sim's interactions with other Sim's except in possibly a very basic subtle way. There are quite a few of these traits. Vehicle enthusiast is another such trait. You get to name your car. There you go. That's all. Nothing more to see here, please move along....
A better system in my opinion would have been to leave the personality points and aspirations in and added maybe two or three traits. Thin the traits down, keep the personality points and aspirations in, then mix the two together. Not only do you keep consistency between the two games, but you have a Sim who is not just interesting on the surface but also deep down.
All of that being said leads to this. I have a terrible time creating personalities in TS3. I guess I am just not creative enough to develop a stereotype and call that a personality. Every time the opportunity comes up for me to choose traits I'm at a complete loss. I had this problem in TS2 on occasion but not to this extent. In TS2, the challenge of trying to choose hobbies to round out a Sim would give me trouble. After floundering around with this I found a post in another Sim Blog that is absolutely brilliant. I'm modifying it for TS3. It'll still be difficult to start a whole new Sim, but for existing Sims I believe this would solve my problem.
When a child is born, the first trait will be chosen from the Mother's list of traits. The second trait will be from the Father's list of traits. Third trait will be a random roll, and the fourth trait will be a my choice. Possibly for the fifth trait, I'm thinking a grandparent or other relative. I'm also going to mentally remove certain traits from the choices. Specifically the traits I discussed earlier. Childish, Daredevil, Vehicle Enthusiast, etc. If one of those traits were to roll up. I'll just reroll.
As for the creating a personality, I've been thinking on some way to translate TS2 personalities and Aspirations into TS3. Some would be easy, for example if you wanted a family Sim, they would be given the family oriented trait. Then choose other traits to back that up along with traits that are similar to personality points. It's not something that I have fleshed out but that I am working on.
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