The Sims 2 is fun and all, but it's too easy. Since the game lacks some kind of hard mode option, I went looking for a does-it-all mod that would accomplish similar results. Couldn't find one unfortunately, so instead I started a compilation of small mods to get the same thing going following a list of personal changes that I deem appropriate for a hard more option.

I'm asking for the community help and imput to fill the empty lines.

Here is the list of changes I'm looking for, and the corresponding mods I found so far. The goal of the compilation isn't to list every mod available, but to find at least one mod for each change. If several mods accomplish the same thing (ex: money) I'll only pick the one I deem to be the better one. The goal is to make the game harder, not impossible, one mod for each change is enough.

• more frequent burglars / fires / catastrophes -----> Daily & Weekly Arsonist/Burglar, Lightning Storm Fix (Optional: Realistic Sickness, Faster Disease Processing,
  Frequent Disease Processing, More Dangerous Fire)
• harder income management -------------------------> More realistic Payment for Maxis careers (Optional: Cyjon's Bigger Bills or AH Higher Bills, No free food with refrigerator, Taxi charges money, Vehicles cost money to drive, Tipping Fix, No20KHandout, No Inheritance, Fair wages for service NPC)
• harder relationships ------------------------------------> Harder Relationships (Optional: Increased Challenge Dating)
• more needs decay --------------------------------------> ?? (Optional: Studying is not Fun)
• more aspiration decay ---------------------------------> More Aspiration Decay
• more mood decay --------------------------------------> ??
• skill points now decay over time ---------------------> ?? (Optional: Slower Skilling hack 1 or 3 or 5, Sim Blender cheats use at your own risk)
• more expensive aspiration rewards -----------------> Increased Challenge Asp Rewards (Optional: Slower LTA Gain, Slower Aspiration Benefits)
  
• harder business ----------------------------------------> Increased Challenge Business lvl1-5 or Increased Challenge, business lvl1-10 (Optional: Harder Sales, Less Profitable Junk Car)
• harder jobs ---------------------------------------------> Increased Challenge Jobs or
• harder school -------------------------------------------> Read Phantomknight comment for more info; (Optional: Harder Grades, Harder Homework)
• harder university ---------------------------------------> Read Phantomknight comment for more info; (Optional: Harder Grades Class / Term / Professors, Harder Jobs (no free promotion upon graduating university))
• harder gardening --------------------------------------> ?? (Optional: NoFreshFood, MoreRealisticYields, LowerFishPrices)
  
• others: ---------------------------------------------------> Hack Detection Conflict Utility, (Optional significantly alter the gameplay of all controllable sims and npcs use at your own risk: ACR aka more pregnancies & babies for all adult sims, Inteen aka more pregnancies & babies for all teen sims, Zombie Apocalypse aka Dawn of the Dead, Hidden Needs aka Russian roulette )
  

If you think I missed something or want to share something, you are encouraged to comment.

Thanks.

Edited to add/remove stuff.

Interesting mods list. Also there's the Blind Needs Challenge at this link (http://hexagonal-bipyramid.tumblr.c...the-blind-needs) which basically hides the need bars so you have to rely on the plumbob color to see what mood the sim is in.

Harder Income Management: Cyjon's Bigger Bills. There's also a number of other bigger bills mods.

Love this idea! Will have to get links when I go home and check my download folder, but, off the top of my head, I know I have mods for:
-slower skills
-Harder grades (I use a combo for this)
-Harder Uni
-More difficult OFB biz levels
-slower LTA gain (makes it harder to fill up the FT meter)
-More expensive npcs (gardener, nanny, etc.)
-empty fridges (makes it so fridges you buy in the catalog don't come with groceries)
-cars cost money to drive; taxis cost money
-cell phones cost money
-no seasons food boost

Plus I know there's mods for more castrophes like rain/lightning and fire. Oh, and satellites. So, I'll edit this post and fill out links later.

I did not know there was a mod for empty fridges. I need that one!

I have:
BoilingOil's No Fresh Food! (gets rid of the sparklies and the extra filling portions of fresh food) and his Lower Fish Prices.
CyJon's - Job Stopinator (keeps Sims from climbing to the top of their career).
MATY - Slower Skilling, No 20k handouts, Real Sickness & No Instant Love (I wonder if this will conflict with the Harder Relationships?)

Soon, I'll be adding Cyjon's Frequent Disease Processing.

Thanks for this thread, fe2o3! I'm going to look for some of the mods mentioned.

My suggestions may be hard to find since I honestly don't know where I got some of them (I'll look and edit the post if I can find them, or I can just upload them if you want).

-Bought fridges come empty. You could technically cheat to soften the blow with a community garden, if you found it too difficult or if having this as a global mod bothers you. I like it for the realism, added challenge, and it makes gardens, especially ones made with Sun&Moon's custom crops, more of a desirable thing. This one is available on mts, I'll just naked-link because I'm feeling lazy: http://modthesims.info/d/288769

-ChristianLov's debit card. Sometimes I want my fresh from CAS sims to have a cute house from the get go, I like decorating, but it costs money. I'll buy them the debit card for $1 and then they can take out a loan to... I think the limit is $10k, not sure, but I usually do less, because after I let them take out the loan and buy stuff, like deco, skilling objects, better furniture, they aren't allowed to buy anything until they pay it off except for in specific scenarios like fire/burglary, or if it's a want that if fulfilled will help them reach other goals. It functions like bills and will quickly become overdue, unless you pay a fee to add days. Unfortunately I have no idea where to find this online, but I have an archive on my external somewhere with all of his hacks/mods.

-Alternatively, I have an ATM. You can do loans, but leaving money in the bank will help them accumulate money. If you have the Unsavory Charlatan running around this comes in handy, though, since he can't just rob your bank accounts. I think this is the one: http://modthesims.info/d/87893

I know I have a few more but they're slipping my mind at the moment.

I also have No Instant Love http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ since that is on the relationship harder vein.

I don't know of a skill decay mod although you could roll a die to decide if the sim will be loosing a point and then roll again to decide which skill type. Then use something like the simblender to remove one.

If you use Monique's computer loans your sims will soon be as poor as church mice because the interest rate on that is terrible. I had to actual ditch it and I like keeping sims poor.

Halved Maxis wages. http://modthesims.info/d/304457

I think the rest has been mentioned.

Hardcore Simming is an interesting concept. Oh and isn't there a mod to change the prices for NPC services?

I use Daily & Weekly Arsonist/Burglar ( http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=84336 ) to have the burglar come more often. It also makes the burglar set things on fire. It's great!

I'm pretty sure this is exactly what my game needed tbh.
EDIT: Wait, are you using this with all EPs and such? I want it but I don't know if it'll work with a fully EP/SP'd game.

I decided to test it out and the burglar came on the first night and set three things on fire, and thanks to more dangerous fire, the inferno burned down everything in their house and killed everyone. Looks like it's a keeper!

That's not a burglar anymore, that's a pyro! Kewl.

First, off I'm very excited to share my cc list and finds, so thanks, fe2o3, for starting the thread. This post is about to get loooong though, so I apologize in advance if anyone ninja's me and I'll try to remember to check the thread before I finish this post. If anything, I'll put links up too, so that no one has to search too hard. Also, you'll probably notice that the post gets less descriptive as it goes on. I can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it took hours to write this all up, so I hope this helps people. (Side note, I feel like that last sentence belongs in the "You've been playing Sims 2 too much when..." thread.) Anywho.

















And that, my friends, is all I got for now. Apologizes for any ridiculous spelling and grammar errors you may find, too. Again, hours. I'm tired now.

Does more dangerous fire allow fire to spread out of the room it started in?

Great list, Phantomknight!

Have you also heard of Real Sickness? It's on MATY but not a Pescado mod. That's something I'd seriously consider adding to the list. I would also recommend pairing this with Cyjon's Faster Disease Processing and Frequent Disease Processing, otherwise sims on lots with a high number of sick people can get stuck in a loop of never being able to recover, which could be useful if you want a terminal kind of disease, but is frustrating for most players. I find with all three in, when my sims get sick I have to watch them very closely and force them to rest otherwise they will die. This can mean skipping work or school, which can of course be disastrous. Something in one of these hacks seems to disable the healing effect of Orange Juice, if that ever worked, and there is some bug in that Comfort Soup only works about 50% of the time, the other half of the time they stand up and immediately get sick again. Warning: If you have RS installed for some time and then suddenly add Cyjon's two mods, many of your sick sims will immediately die. But any sim who gets sick after installing the two Cyjon mods gets the normal process applied to them and will die if you don't look after them, but normally live if you're very careful and they are pampered enough to have the luxury of resting.

I prefer banning Humble entirely and letting the computer be purchaseable from the catalogue. It would annoy me too much to have my families charged for something they didn't order.

I think my dropbox link is broken, so I intend to move these over to MTS at some point, but I also created a combination of teen careers/schools which are harder for teens to maintain, although with some providing higher wages, which really helps out when you have teens who live independently, come from very poor families, or need to support their illegitimate offspring as a result of some of these other hacks!

Charity, unfortunately no. That's something I've always wished for as well. But because it spreads faster, it does mean that your sims' escape routes can end up blocked.

Does anyone know of a mod for lower chance of receiving the Genie lamp? 2% per sim per day is massively too high and I feel like one or another of my families gets one every week or more in some populous hoods. Currently I roll a die for whether they can keep it and if not they get to sell it for the small cash bonus, but I'd rather just make it a much rarer event TBH.

This is a very interesting topic to me and I've made some mods in this area, some of which have already been mentioned.



My more dangerous fire mod has already been mentioned, I do think it's a lot of fun so I hope others enjoy it too. It doesn't allow fire to spread out of the room it started in, as it's just a simple change to some constansts in the BCON file. I did take a quick look at the function that controls fire spreading, I could take out the check for only spreading in one room but then it would also spread through solid walls which doesn't seem right, I couldn't find how to make it only spread through doors so I left it alone.



I did try changing this once, but then I decided the changes were not fun and took them out again. I could probably make + upload a mod that does this if there's a demand for it.

I did make a mod that reduces the "starvation protection" that sims get when hunger is very low, that makes it take a long time for them to starve to death. It's fun to use with the no free food fridge. You can find it linked from my journal. It's bundled in with a change that limits the hygenie decay for dogs, but I could make a seperate version. I also intend to re-upload all the files linked to there to SimFileShare.



Part of the problem with this is that aspiration rewards can be made to cost more than around 32,000. An old, but still working mod of mine made them more likely to fail, so there is at least some element of risk to using them. The 25% for elixer of life in particular makes it more expensive in practice, since each failure reverses the effect of one success.

I also made a simple mod which increased the cost of the money tree, but so far haven't uploaded it anywhere.



That mod can be found here

@SimFreq - I also use Real Sickness together with Cyjon's Faster Disease Processing and Frequent Disease Processing, it makes sickness more than hard enough to deal with. I also made a mod to make the genie come less option, it's linked to in my journal. With this mod you'll once a sim has at least 2/3rds lifetime aspiration, because getting the genie too early can really mess up the challenge.

All the other mods linked to in my journal are designed to make the game harder in one way or the other, there's one to make college harder to get into and give lower grants, one to make repairing harder (which also increases chances of electrocution) and one to allow non-controllable sims to get pregnant as well affecting needs when giving birth.

Thank you so much for the elaborate list @Phantomknight ! That's awesome. And now I need the College Admissions flavor pack..how did I missed that one?

Fire burns walls in real life and so will totally spread that way. I'd go for it, and add the option/flavor

My bad. I should have said that I have all EPs/SPs. I glad that you tried it out. I love that it creates such chaos. Who knew that a burglar could be so deadly?

Lots of good posts, I won't be adding everything suggested to the first post just yet I don't think, we will see. Also some mods I can't really judge of their usefulness (ex: slower LTA gain.. seems useful if you play a lot of toddlers and teenagers I guess?), some other mods seem good but really minor (ex: No free food with refrigerator, that's smart, but you save what, 200$ over a lifetime? haha), some mods I had previously checked but wasn't convinced by the way they implemented said changes, and finally some suggested mods without link I wasn't able to find (ex: More difficult OFB business levels, maybe ah_cd_business_levels?)



That's actually really smart, I can see it working great as a short challenge of sorts, but I'm afraid it's going to make the game less engaging and less fun in the long run. The whole point of playing The Sims is to use the information you are given to make the right decisions, a bit like a puzzle, you are given all the pieces right at the start and you have to use your observation and deduction skills to assemble those pieces together correctly to complete the puzzle, that means accordingly balancing your sim needs and aspirations with its daily routine and the kind of actions you do and furnitures you buy to hopefully "beat the game". By hiding that information, the game becomes more of a crap shoot where your decisions and actions are driven by luck more than observation, logic or reasoning, which is not as fun imo.



Looks good. I would have preferred an increased chance % over a weekly occurrence to avoid routine / keep it an unexpected event.



A lot of good stuff, thanks for typing out the description of each mod, makes it a lot easier for me to tell what and how.



I found that one indeed, but I'm not convinced it's the right approach, it only delays the inevitable where your sim eventually learns everything or close to it. I think a system where your sim has to keep practising a skill now and then (say once or twice a week after level 5 idk) or risk losing a skill point to be more realistic and engaging from a gameplay perspective, to encourage your sim to create habits / routine that revolves around that activity, just like every other system really with its own activities (needs, mood, etc..) that needs to be interacted with daily + that forces your sim to make choices, so he can't learn and practice everything and become a superhuman.

Sim Blender seems to do that, but you have to do it manually every time if I understand correctly? heh. It's an option I guess, not the most elegant one.



Like that a lot, it's bit of a quirky way to do it, but it's essentially accomplish the same thing like you said.

The other stuff in your journal, I'd would have to have another look when I have a better sense of certain mechanics, and how easy/hard everything is. But yes, dating, and early business levels seem bit easy.



Can someone clarify the nuance between those 2? I don't really get it tbh. What are the repercussions on the gameplay for either of them?

I believe Slower Aspiration Benefits slows down the points gain, thus you earn the slower aspiration perks (which includes, need decays, secondary, and first aspiration perks). LTA makes it slower for sim to reach a certain aspiration's bar color / nirvana.

Well, @fe2o3, I can tell you how I used some of the mods, and maybe that'll help your confusion?


For the no free food and empty fridges, it's not about saving money, but about making the game feel less "cheaty" or about making it realistic--at least for me. Some players, when their fridge is empty, just buy another fridge. Maybe you want to make it so that sims have to buy groceries (either from the store or over the phone)--or you want to have sims grow their own food (or forage and hunt for it, if you play with mods). It's about taking away the convenience of buying things from the catalog and how you view the world your sims live in.

And for the skill limiting, yeah, it sucks a bit that you manually have to do it (game limitations, I guess), but there are some out there that place limits via object--i.e., sims using the easel can only gain x amount of skills. The problem with that though, is that you'd have to do that with every custom version of an object that you place in your game. The sim blender is probably the easiest way, and I think the way a lot of people use it is making sure that sims don't earn too many skills early in life. Because even if you mostly ignore your toddlers and kids, if you have the right objects in your house, they can very well max some skills without any direction from you.

I think you've kind of missed the point here. You can't 'beat the game'. The Sims isn't that kind of game. It's a sandbox. You don't beat the sandbox; you play in it until it isn't fun anymore.



I always mean to buy groceries! But then I get the empty fridge message and I just wanted to feed them now and f--k it, have a new fridge. XD

Posting this separately cuz I didn't see the question while I was writing my second post.

For extra clarification, yes, Slower Aspiration Benefits slows down the point gain--again, lowering the points that get added to the aspiration bar. Cyjon's mod slows down the hourly rate that fills up the bar. Cyjon explains it a bit on the mod page, but basically, sims also earn aspiration points every hour (and the better your aspiration, the more points). Think of the LTA bar like a meter. It constantly runs, adding points to the bar. Certain milestones/wants, also add boosts to the bar. In a vanilla game, toddlers' LTA bar fills up fast, because the game sets it so that the shorter the life stage, the more the hourly adjustment will be. This means that a toddler's aspiration bar will have much more of an impact than an adult's. The wikia also explains this a bit here. Doc Doofus' mod will slow/lower the boosts to the meter, Cyon's will slow the meter overall, making the meter run the same rate through a sim's life, instead of fast at the beginning, then slowing down as sims get older.

And Charity, no judgement. We've all been there at least once.

You might like dizzy's stuff-face-hack (in my signature, latest version is in magic-al10c.zip) - it replaces the "stuff face" on the fridge with "go shopping" and they'll go off the lot for a few minutes and return with groceries (which cost money). It's pretty convenient.

Thanks for the clarification I get it now.



Well yeah, you can always restart the game over and over with a new generation etc, but your playthrough for the sim you are playing essentially ends when he dies, and to some extent, when he achieved his lifetime want/aspiration etc. Which doesn't change the premise, gambling with your character needs/mood and the actions/decisions related to it,or simply said, playing randomly, isn't as fun as trying to make the right actions/decisions based on the information you are given, or simply said, playing logically. It's like playing eyes closed, sure, that can be fun for a moment, and in a way creates its own difficulty, but eventually you don't really get to play the game and appreciate it for what it is haha.



I got that part, but that makes no sense to me haha, refrigerators are way too expensive to simply throw them away twice a week haha, you might as well be playing to lose, you are losing so much money doing that, that's really counter productive, unless you are a millionaire or something.