Ever since first reading Katya Stevens post on Sims motivation levels (http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...869#post3982869 middle of the page) I've been interested in setting up my own rules on this. I've wanted a way to be able to play different sims in various styles and get out of my 'You will all learn every toddler skill, garden for eggplants, skill your eyeballs off for the next promotion' style of play. I had already set down not long ago that only sims with the nature hobby or knowledge sims could garden for eggplants as I was having far too many families gain loads of skills that way. I've taken on a few of those motivation rules on and changed a lot too. For example with average sims I've decided they can skill so long as they roll a want to and can gain promotions through townies, chance cards and any skills they actually want to get. I'm only playing my first family rotation with the new rule set made up of an overachieving fortune sim wife who is in the criminal career track, an averagely motivated family sim husband who never has skilling wants so he now spends his free time mostly playing computer games instead of skilling as he had been doing, an averagely motivated toddler and a new baby.

I've dropped the point requirement both down and up so that I have a few more unmotivated and a few more highly motivated sims. I've also set slightly different point requirements for fortune and knowledge sims then the other aspirations.

Just wondering if anyone else does this or something similar and how it plays out in your game?

I nicked the idea from Katya myself, and I wouldn't play without it now :-) I find it really hard when I do challenges because I want to play sims according to their motivation level even when it's not required!

I did change a few things, which I am too sleepy to list right now but will try and remember to come back and list them at some point. Ones that spring to mind are the career level limit according to motivation - I do that based on qualifications instead, so if an under-achieving sim rolls enough skilling wants as a toddler/child/teen to get 3 scholarships for university and then rolls enough skilling and studying wants as a YA to get a degree, they can reach the highest level allowed by a degree holder in the specific career track that their degree aims towards. It makes more sense in ym head!

I also allow under-achieving sims to study parenting if they roll a want to do so, but not the AL skills. Average sims can study 3 of the bookcase skills (parenting, fire safety, anger management etc) and over-achievers can study as many as they want.

Oh, and I changed the point level and took in to account neatness, activity and playfulness when calculating it.

I follow some guidelines in every hood, like: from the time they are toddlers, active Sims get all the secondary aspiration points that make them sleep less, etc. I made a hood that had a "Frog" challenge, and created parents that had ALL their aspiration points (& interests & hobbies!) set to match my idea of a Sim "frog". Lazy, sloppy, friendly, playful. And with ACR and "Lot full of Sims" they had LOTS of little froggies!

But boy did the genetics surprise me! With both parents haveing the above EXTREEM traits, about half of the kids were NEAT & SERIOUS! They got to be the ones who got to stay awake, study, and work. It gives the game some much needed autonomy!

I don't have rules about this. It seems to come naturally with my knack for settling in and listening to the sims, playing each one as an individual. I find it much easier to roll in the moment, playing character, than to make a bunch of rules; though individual sims will have specific, articulated rules when appropriate. Like "Hi Thyme can't learn out of a bookcase because he's dyslexic." That wasn't something I set down ahead of time. At some point on the Thyme family's first day or so, I decided that Hi wasn't only going to avoid skilling out of the bookcase because he's a Pleasure sim with no intrinsic interest in advancing in his job, but because he specifically couldn't learn from books. It explains a lot about him, actually. At first I thought he was feckless - all those girls with different mothers and a 50 1st dates LTW - but he wasn't playing that way and then suddenly, I got it. He's neither stupid nor feckless - he just doesn't learn or think the way society expects him to. (This is called a "learning disability" because calling it a "teaching limitation" calls on institutions to adjust to the individual rather than the other way around. And we can't have that, now, can we?)

lauratje86 I'd be interested to see how you factor in neatness to the score as well. I'm not limiting average sims to level 5 of a career as I don't think you have to always be highly motivated or a genius to fulfil your dreams. The husband’s LTW is for a golden anniversary so that is very achievable even if he never gains many promotions. It's David Ottomus and he never made uni and is only a pest exterminator (NPC jobs) He is right on the cusp of being low motivation so it really does fit him. Peni would not have needed that, but I forget things and looking at a sims score when I open a house will give me a shove in the right direction. I’m hoping it will help with those sims who seem to have little character.

Peni, your memory of your sims must far outweigh mine as while I have a general idea of them after a day or two of play; by the time I come back around to their house I would have forgotten those kinds of details.

It's not a question of remembering them; it's a question of knowing them. You don't have to remember what your friends are like, do you? Oh, you may forget which one is the one who won't eat brownies with walnuts and which is the one who insists on them, but even after being away from them for a long time, you know roughly what to expect from them, which one you can call in the middle of the night if you're broken down by the side of the road, and which one will really love the movie you just walked out of. I can't remember reliably what star sign anybody is, and I lose track of LTWs, and I'll mix up details; but I know them when they walk onto a lot, and the name "Hi Thyme" or "Kestrel Hawkins" serves as the memory hook that pulls the whole character out from the packed ranks of sims in memory.

And of course I do review everything when I come into a lot - go through all the tabs on the HUD for everyone on the lot, review the last rotation's story panel (updated right before I exited the lot last) - so I've had a refresher and have my head in the right people by the time I take the game on pause. If I had a bunch of rules, I'd have to be constantly referring to them and it'd spoil the rhythm of my play.

I can't remember rules when I'm playing a tabletop game, either. That part of my brain isn't functioning. Even when I'm gamemastering an RPG, I rely on the players to remember the rules during play. As long as everything's making story and character sense, the rest will follow for me, and somebody'll tell me if I pick up the wrong die, or will look up the rule and read it out if we need an interpretation; which I can then make on the fly.

What works best for you is always going to depend on how your brain works. Like some people can read music but can't play be ear, some people can do both with equal facility, and some people who play by ear are stifled and lose their touch if they have to read music.

lauratje86, I'd also be interested in seeing how you've adapted the rules and to what.

Well, seeing as I was name-dropped in the first post, it's obvious that I play this way I took the Active minus Playful points = motivation from the Revised Boomtown challenge because it gives me a very easy way to tell if a sim is a particular aspiration level at a glance (even if I do accidentally think a sim is low motivation when they're average -- sorry Victor Yard and Eric Tabarez!). In other rules (risky pregnncy chance or ideal jobs, for example) I do have a lot of calculations or note tracking, but keeping motivation simple is best for me. As I use ACR stuff like risky pregnancy chance and ideal number of children is saved to their token, and most other info is written in their bios (ideal jobs including a marker as to which one is their LTW if applicable; what level they can get to in their ideal jobs; what bachelor's degree they got; whether they're in the middle of doing a master's/doctorate (or bachelor's by correspondance) and what year they're in, how many articles and papers they've written; how much tuition they've paid). Slower aging helps me a lot as I don't need to calculate all the time -- the most I do is when a sim becomes a teen and I set their ideal # children, risky pregnancy chance, and applicable jobs.

I did initially change the requirements for high/low motivation (change from -5/+5 to -8/+8) but found that way too few sims were anything other than average so I returned to the normal requirements -- by default Scorpio and Gemini are high motivation, Taurus and Libra are low motivation, but I've had enough born in game sims who are different motivations without being those star signs that it's not always a guarantee (Pisces seems to be a common sign among my current high motivation sims, and I've had some Scorpios and Taurus be average instead of high and low respectively).

I have found a couple of rules over time have been a bit restrictive, and I'm relaxing the skilling rules so that if a sim rolls the want to skill at any point they can do so without restriction. I've also been thinking about allowing chance card promotions (currently, with Cyjon's Job Stoppinator, it stops every possible promotion or demotion chance), I'd just need to do it manually and credit the family with the relevant funds.

I've only changed the numbers by one point each way. So instead of -4 to +4 being Average I have it as ( -3 to +3) for family, popularity, romance and pleasure sims, with knowledge and fortune sims being -2 to +3 because I think Knowledge and fortune should have higher levels of motivation. So any knowledge or fortune sim who only sits at -3 or -4 is going to below motivation. I did think of making average up to +4 for them, but then I would have so few motivated sims and everyone would be boringly average.

I've added this for job types, education and skilling only. So long as average sims roll the want they can skill. I haven't quite worked out low motivation yet, but right now I'm only allowing them to skill if they do it on free will. I'm not setting skilling limits.

I just had the two eldest Newson kids grow up and move out and Ginger who I initially thought of being hard working and responsible is by the chart low motivation. Since she grew up in a BV backpack I've decided she just wants to travel and earn money as she goes. So far on her first day she earned some money at a cooking contest (rolled want) and by free will playing the piano in the apartment common area. It paid the bill at least.

What do you all do with very poor unmotivated sims? Her and Gavin? (he's kind of boring) could only aford a shared room at my very cheapest rundown apartment block due to the no 20K handout. I think they had about $200 cash in the sim bin. One step up from being on a homeless block. He is average motivation but I see him more as low motivation as he is rather a whiny no hoper. Since he hasn't yet rolled a want to get a job he hasn't got one. So far he's only sold a $9 painting.

What do I do with very poor, unmotivated sims? Well, they have to work their butts off or resign themselves to the fact that they'll never really get anywhere. Surprisingly, my poorest family is actually a family of average motivation sims, it's just that circumstances have been quite biased against them:

Mia Kraemer is a Pleasure sim with no job LTW, and her career prospects were Culinary or Gamer, or any of the NPC careers. She found a job as a repairwoman and has stayed there because switching to any other job will mean she'll have to take a pay cut (earning about $1.5k/week). Jason, her boyfriend, is level 7 in the Entertainment career, earning $2.1k/week. Early on they were renting a small studio apartment (rent $350 a week), then Mia got pregnant by risky woohoo. Everything was doable, Joseph became a child...and Mia got pregnant again. I managed to somehow get a bunk bed and a crib in, but the family had to move before Scarlett became a child as there was no room for another full-sized bed. They're now in their third apartment, Joseph has gone off to live with his girlfriend (poor family = no money, plus Joseph had little to no interest in university), and Scarlett...well, let's say risky pregnancies run in the family and as she has a daughter to look after, she won't be going to university (plus she's a Family sim).

(I should say that they live in Springvale, which is my Downtown area: tons of apartments but very few houses unless you're able to put down $50k minimum for one of them, which is very difficult with no 20k handouts, taxes, and university tuition fees. The only household with a low motivation sim was the Marshalls and they lived in Danport, a farming community with very cheap housing: they run a farm shop and even with ten children they've been doing okay money-wise.)

Sorry for not replying sooner, I completely forgot that I'd said I'd come back to this until I posted in Katya's thread about encouraging/nature vs nurture just now. Then for some reason it took me ages to find it to reply.....

I calculate motivation using a slightly different formula than Katya's - (Active + 1/2Neat) - Playful.

This leads to a value of between -10 and 15. -2 or lower is underachieving motivation, -1 to 6 is average motivation and 7+ is over-achieving motivation. I'm happy with the balance of motivation levels that this gives me.

I imagine Active as being equivalent to their drive to succeed and Neat as their attention to detail versus Playful as their lack of concentration/focus on achievement. Or something like that anyway - the exact wording changes every time I think about it! Especially as it turns out that I didn't have it written down anywhere, until now :-)

Motivation level mainly affects a sim's ability to skill, which is linked to their ability to attend university if they aren't CAS created adults/elders. As I require teens to achieve three scholarships in order to attend university, sims who haven't rolled wants to skill won't get up to 8 points in a skill unless they are over-achievers, who can skill up to 8 points as teens. Average sims only get to skill up to 5 and underachievers to 3 unless they roll the want to skill - either a want for a specific skill & level or the generic "gain a skill point" want. Combined with a harder grades mod and the rule that teens can't go beyond level 2 in a career unless they are over-achievers or roll a want to do so, it's hard for non over-achievers or average/under-achieving Knowledge and sometimes Fortune sims to qualify to go to university. It is theoretically possible though, as sims can gain the orphan scholarship, the alien abduction one, the dance one, the pool one and possibly some others without rolling any skilling or career wants. I also allow sims to attend university on a Military scholarship provided they sign up to the military for X days after they graduate, so some sims attend university via that route.

As I have a system which means that some careers & levels require certain qualifications for sims to work in them, not getting to university means that sims can get stuck in lower level jobs. A few careers can be topped without any qualifications, but not many.

That makes a lot of sense, I like that idea.

Mine is fairly simple and skill related as well. I did have four scholarships but with my other hacks that was too hard so I've dropped it to three. I added the talent badge scholarship mod as I thought those should count. Now farmer’s kids can go to uni and do agriculture if they want.

I have the talent badge scholarships too, so sometimes underachieving and average sims only get to go to university because of those. I only let sims gain some skill badges if they roll a want to do so though, or a want to do the activity that the skill badge pertains to. Gardening happens whether they like it or not though, for sims who live in households with productive gardens, anyway. Fishing is sometimes also compulsory.

I've just decided to add the lower wages and higher bills hacks to my latest 'hood, so I may have to adjust my tuition fees so that it's still vaguely doable for my sims. I think that a lot more of them will require loans in future, that's for sure! :-)

Loans: pretty much unless they come from a rich family (and thus have trust funds) or have parents who are willing to put some money towards their education, pretty much all my sims take out loans for their college educations. Most of them tend to do well enough to pay their loans back within a few years, but to my surprise the family which may be hit the hardest is Marc Bulger and Meredith Tabarez: Meredith has a Master's, but is stuck at level 4 of the Oceanography career (she has the wrong degree to get any further) while Marc is level 2 of the Medical career and he'd need to enroll in nursing school to get any further. However, Marc is currently studying for his Master's, and will be doing a PhD when he's finished, which means he'll be landed with a $37,000 tuition bill (technically more as he's already gaining interest on his loan for his Bachelor's degree). His LTW is to be an Ecological Guru so when he gets that position he will be making a ton of money, but he needs to a] find a position in Natural Science and b] want to get promoted up that far (or get lucky with the level 6 chance card).

Echoing lauratje86 regarding the badge scholarships: I have a whole family (ten children plus two grandchildren) in Cresdale who live in Danport, my farming community. The mother (Elise) and about 4 of the children are underachievers, but because they live in Danport they have a huge garden and everyone chips in. They also have a shop where they sell excess produce, so it's not uncommon for them to have the necessary three-scholarship requirements for university (choice of gardening, sales, restocking, cashier) especially as, with the business ones, I tend to swap them all around when they get a silver level badge.

Some of my sms develope their own quirks I can follow and remember, some don't. I use the Active miss Playful equals motivation but I don't follow the strict limits and I only apply it for the high and low sims. High Sims will work towards their goals (which vary between Career, Social, and Experiences, depending on the Sim) relentlessly. While Low Sims need to Want to work towards those goals.

Inspired by it, I figure a Sim's Focus by adding their Outgoing and Nice points. No Average there, just High 10-20 and Low 0-10. High are Others Focused, and wants regarding specific other Sims take presidence, while Low are Self Focused with Wants regarding themselves take presidence. For example, a Popularity Sim who is Social-Self focused is more concerned with the number of friends they have, but a Popularity Sim who is Social-Other focused is more concerned with the daily and lifetime relationship level of the friends they currently have.

University cost depends on the school Ivy League schools are the only place to get Law, Medical, and Science degrees and they cost approximately 10 scholarships worth, or about 10,000 if the Teen's parents want to cough up the cash. Not impossible, but each semester after the first cost half of that, 5,000, and the money goes to the school, not the student. Dean's List money and anything over that amount the student gets to keep/live on.
Other Universities cost about 7,800 the first semester and 3,900 for each afterwards and cover all degrees but the three at Ivy Legue.
Community College cost a mere 4,000 with 2,000 a semester after and provide degrees for all those careers I find weird for needing a degree in Sims, lol.
Oh, and I offer a private university if I have a Sim at the top of Education, which provides discounts for friends and family. They have to put up the money to start the school and half the tuition payment goes to them, but hey, they paid for the thing.

I am with Penni! Sims are actually all different from each other, and one does get to know their little quirks. I have my favourites in any hood, not because they were made according to what I like in a Sim, just because they are adorable. And some are just more motivated than others, but some may get motivated by something (or somebody) they like.

For me, playing to any rules (besides my own, which actually mean banning anything that sounds like too much trouble, like taxes!) would drain the game of any fun - it is exactly going along with the flow that works for me. I do have routines (but neither me nor my Sims get punished if they are not followed) in the military hood. Some of my Sims were fired - they were not soldier material; and it was interesting to see some lazy ones really trying to get that extra body point while others glared at me (What? Me? Are you out of your mind? - Yes, you, into the pool you go! Not floating on your back! Swim! - and next moment, he/she is out of the pool!).

Music - well, I can listen to it!

I like to keep things fairly simple in my actual gameplay to avoid overcomplicating the mechanics and taking the fun out of it for myself. To determine 'motivation' I look at where a sim was born - was a wealthy, middle class, working class or poorer neighbourhood? That will determine what skilling tools they have access to. Then I look at the family. Are they poor but hardworking? Wealthy but lazy? What type of household is it? Next I look at the sim themselves. A poor knowledge sim is going to work harder to gain what skills they can than a wealthy but indolent pleasure sim. I play fully wants based, so if a sim rolls a want for a skill point, they'll get it and if they don't then they won't. That also determines for the most part how likely they are to advance in their careers. If they aren't rolling wants for skill points or for the right skill points, then they won't earn them. That said, sometimes you have a sim like Victor Corsillo, who - while hardworking and dedicated to his career, is desperate for love, marriage and children. He dropped everything to chase Heidi when she walked past one day, and now they're engaged and living in a little house in North Harlow together. He's a romance sim if I recall correctly. I like to let my sims dictate to me how they want to be played and where they want to end up, and how it's all going to go.

To determine aspiration I look at the same factors above - the family's economic situation, their habits as a group, the sim's habits from and up throughout their lives, and their interests. Then I give them the aspiration that best fits them and their unique situation. I don't use calculations for either aspiration or motivation as it would make my head explode trying to do that for every single sim, and because when I look at people, while some things can be calculated, there's always an element of randomness. Sometimes a sloppy, lazy, broke family churns out a star overachiever. Sometimes an extroverted aggressive middle class family churns out a poor starving artist with a heart of gold. I like for things like that to be possible in my sims. Just because you come from poverty doesn't mean you can't achieve - it just means it's going to be harder for you then for someone born with better means. And besides, it makes for drama.

I have had a child of a doctor and a SWAT team leader get pregnant as a teen, refuse to go to uni, essentially flunk out and love raising her baby as a single mum in a poor neighbourhood because that's all she can now afford after running off.

I've also had a kid with no parents at all and no money and no means, make it to university on scholarships and make something of himself.

I love that kind of randomness because it makes my sims come alive. They seem to be doing things based on personality, upbringing and life experiences - just like real people.