Sims Talk: Free Time hobby determination

[strangetomato]

I'm getting pretty ready to install Free Time, especially now that InSIM SimPE has been updated (that was fast). I will, however, need a plan of attack for all of my story sims, and their hobbies. I have a little list going already, and maybe I'll post it later to think out loud. I just found a list of traits that determine a sim's "true hobby", so I thought I'd share, in case you haven't seen it yet. This gives me a good idea of what my sims might end up with, but I'm not really liking how this element of the game works.

So it seems that the pre-determined "true hobby" that sims are given with Free Time is based on a combination of personality, skills, and interests. And here are the categories (I swiped this from the BBS somewhere):


Arts & Crafts - sloppy, nice - creativity - culture, fashion
Cuisine - neat, lazy - cooking - food
Film & Literature - shy, lazy - charisma - entertainment, culture
Fitness - outgoing, active - body - health
Games - playful, grouchy - logic - entertainment
Music & Dance - outgoing, serious - creativity - entertainment
Nature - sloppy, playful - cleaning - animals, environment, weather
Science - neat, serious - logic - sci-fi
Sports - active, grouchy - body - sports
Tinkering - shy, nice - mechanical - toys


I'm not really into this idea. It's way too limiting and it creates these "types" for each hobby. (Oh, but why don't I love grouping people into limiting categories? It's so much fun. *sigh*) Like aspiration, why not let us look at the personality of our sims and determine the hobby interest ourselves? Or let it be random, or at least more random than it is right now. The way it's set up now, you can only be into certain hobbies if you have a certain personality, which is, quite frankly, bullshit. I know plenty of musicians that are not serious, plenty of neat artsy types (more than sloppy ones, really), and why on earth would you need to be grouchy to enjoy sports? Argh, I say. Argh!

Using Buck Grunt as an example, he could end up with cuisine (not so bad), science (errm...), or he could end up with tinkering. Tinkering, people! What happened to him wanting to be a "pet stylist to the stars"? I have no idea why shyness would be connected to tinkering, anyway. Seriousness would be more accurate, in my opinion. But how limiting is that?! I want him to have arts and crafts (and he'll have it, don't worry), but the game creators have decided that a neat sim wouldn't like sewing? This makes no sense to me. Have they never heard of Martha Stewart? She's not exactly a slob.

... and Nervous Subject will probably like sports? That just seems wrong to me too. Shouldn't outgoingness be a factor for that one too? (I think I'm leaning towards film and literature for Nervous, myself. I haven't decided yet, but he does seem to like to read a lot, despite the high energy level.)

I'm not sure what to think of it all, really, but I don't really like it. It's just too limiting for me (but at least gender was not a factor). I think I will be taking the hobby destiny of my sims into my own hands, in most cases.

So what do you think?

Edited to add: My brain read that as InSIM, but I should have said SimPE. Oops! I need a nap.

Comments

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

It seems like having hobbies do run in families, as part of the in-game system too. That makes sense on some level to me, like how musical talent often runs in families, but for some of the hobbies, it makes less sense. It would be more interesting to see a family with diverse interests too, I think.

The the Multiple PT hack crashed your game? Was that with Free Time? I use that hack, and I'd be sad to lose it entirely.

[redqueenofevil.livejournal.com]

Well, my game has crashed a couple of times when that was the only hack in the game. It was kind of random at which interval it would crash, etc- but the game IS playable.


Sorry, that wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped. It seems like Sims2 can crash for no reason at all, so I'd just leave the hack in, unless the crashes got to be too much.