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Fewer Hobby Wants
Fewer Hobby Wants
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Default EA wants and the 3 original flavours of the mod
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With the "Personality Restrictions" flavour, wants depend on personality
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Fewer Hobby Wants
Uploaded: 23rd Mar 2017 at 1:10 AM
Updated: 31st Mar 2017 at 6:57 PM - Fixed file names
Updated: 31st Mar 2017 at 6:57 PM - Fixed file names
31st March 2017: I'd accidently swapped the file names for the latest two flavours. Please re-download to get the correct flavour!
28th March 2017: Two new flavours added. Both are only available for M&G.
"No Blog about Hobby Wants & Personality Restrictions" restricts certain hobby wants as in the pervious personality flavour, but leaves the "Talk about Hobby" wants intact.
"Personality Restrictions Only" is the same again, but leaves both the "Talk about Hobby" and the various "Blog about (Hobby)" wants intact.
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I love FreeTime. I love the secondary aspirations, I love all the activities and I love the hobby enthusiasm! But the thing that I really didn't love was the way that wants for hobbies could so easily drown out other wants. Every morning, sims with high enthusiasm would roll wants to talk and blog about their hobbies. Once you've added in the other hobby wants, this can leave no room for non-hobby wants at all!
After spending a long time searching for a mod that prevented sims from being overrun with these wants, I decided to make one myself. During my search I found a lot of other people looking for the same thing, so I thought I should share.
The purpose of the mod is to reduce the number of hobby wants by stopping certain wants from being triggered. The rest of the hobby system is unaffected. There are three flavours of the mod, in two different game compatibility versions. You can only have one of them.
"No Talk or Blog about Hobby Wants" will stop the "Talk about Hobby" and the various "Blog about (Hobby)" wants from being triggered.
"No Talk or Blog about Hobby Wants & Fewer Nature Wants" will also remove the "Catch Butterflies/Fireflies" and "Birdwatch" wants, as sims with high nature enthusiasm still seemed to have a lot of hobby wants even without "Talk/Blog about Hobby".
"No Talk or Blog about Hobby Wants & Personality Restrictions" is more complex, and will further restrict certain hobby wants. The Arts & Crafts want "Get Picture Taken" is restricted to outgoing sims and the Film & Literature want "Write Novel" is for serious sims. For the Nature hobby, "Go Hiking" is for active sims, "Birdwatch" is for shy sims, "Hunt for Bugs" is for serious sims and "Catch Butterflies/Fireflies" is for playful sims.
Each flavour of the mod comes in two game versions for compatibility. The "AL Only" versions are for people who have Apartment Life but not Mansion & Garden Stuff. The "M&G" versions are for people who either have both AL and M&G, or who only have M&G. People with the Ultimate Collection should therefore use the M&G version.
I've also included text files containing my changes- see "Technical Details" for how to use these.
The mod doesn't delete any wants from the game, it only prevents them from being rolled, so if any of your sims have the wants when you first load the mod the wants will still function as normal.
Compatibility
Requires either AL (for the AL only version) or M&G (M&G version) or both (M&G version). Other than that, it is compatible with all other EPs and SPs but does not require any. If you only have FreeTime, see "Technical Details" for instructions on how to create your own version.
You can only have one version of the WantTrees.package in your game, so this will conflict with any other replacement, such as syberspunk's Teen Enabled Adult Wants. I'm not aware of any other WantTree edits compatible with AL/M&G.
The mod should not conflict with mods that alter wants without replacing the WantTrees.package, such as Pescado's "wfsanity" mod. I've been running the personality version of my mod alongside wfsanity for several months now without any problems. Any mod that alters the hobby wants would override my changes, but to my knowledge there are no mods that do this.
Installation
The WantTrees.package included in each download must replace the existing WantTrees.package in your installation folder (not your usual downloads folder).
Important: make a backup of the original file first in case you later want to revert the changes.
The location will be different depending on your latest game.
For AL only:
C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Apartment Life\TSData\Res\Wants
For M&G:
C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff\TSData\Res\Wants
For UC:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Fun with Pets\SP9\TSData\Res\Wants
For the Store Edition:
C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Store Edition\TSData\Res\Wants
If you want to remove the mod, delete my version and replace it with your original backup.
Warnings
Remember to back up your original file! If you fail to back up the original and then later decide to remove the mod you will need to re-install your game.
This is an edit of a core file, so may have more potential risk than other mods. The way I've edited the package should reduce this risk, as no data is actually deleted from the game, just hidden. However, this is still a mod that you use at your own risk, and you should always test new mods out in a testing hood first.
In particular, take care if you choose to edit the file yourself, and don't make changes you're not confident about.
Technical Details
Each hobby has its own tree within the WantTrees.package. Instance numbers for these can be found in the "Text Files" download.
To prevent the wants from being rolled, I edited the age restrictions for each want to be false for each life stage. The wants will now be prevented from rolling for all ages in the same way that they were previously blocked for toddlers.
To make your own version, find each of the hobby want trees and change the age settings for each want you are removing. If the "superZero" setting is ever set to false you will need to change it to true.
It's important to remove each version of the same want, or the settings will conflict and your sims will have blank want panels. So, for instance, you can't decide that the Science hobby should be the only one able to trigger "Talk about Hobby". The "Blog about (Hobby)" wants are unique and can therefore have different settings from each other.
In order to restrict by personality, change the "superZero" setting to true then change one personality trait to true and the others to false. If "superZero" is set to false the personality settings will only weight the chances of the want rolling, but I don't know the details of this. "Talk about Hobby" and the various "Blog about (Hobby)" wants are apparently weighted for outgoing and shy sims respectively, but from my experience in-game this appears to be a very weak (or possibly inactive) weighting.
You can find the text containing my changes in the downloads section. This doesn't change between versions, so you can use it to replace the want trees in FT-only games.
As an aside, I'd recommend having a look through the want trees- there are some interesting details there. For example, did you know that being left at the altar can trigger a want to get a dog or cat? Such a sad little detail!
28th March 2017: Two new flavours added. Both are only available for M&G.
"No Blog about Hobby Wants & Personality Restrictions" restricts certain hobby wants as in the pervious personality flavour, but leaves the "Talk about Hobby" wants intact.
"Personality Restrictions Only" is the same again, but leaves both the "Talk about Hobby" and the various "Blog about (Hobby)" wants intact.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I love FreeTime. I love the secondary aspirations, I love all the activities and I love the hobby enthusiasm! But the thing that I really didn't love was the way that wants for hobbies could so easily drown out other wants. Every morning, sims with high enthusiasm would roll wants to talk and blog about their hobbies. Once you've added in the other hobby wants, this can leave no room for non-hobby wants at all!
After spending a long time searching for a mod that prevented sims from being overrun with these wants, I decided to make one myself. During my search I found a lot of other people looking for the same thing, so I thought I should share.
The purpose of the mod is to reduce the number of hobby wants by stopping certain wants from being triggered. The rest of the hobby system is unaffected. There are three flavours of the mod, in two different game compatibility versions. You can only have one of them.
"No Talk or Blog about Hobby Wants" will stop the "Talk about Hobby" and the various "Blog about (Hobby)" wants from being triggered.
"No Talk or Blog about Hobby Wants & Fewer Nature Wants" will also remove the "Catch Butterflies/Fireflies" and "Birdwatch" wants, as sims with high nature enthusiasm still seemed to have a lot of hobby wants even without "Talk/Blog about Hobby".
"No Talk or Blog about Hobby Wants & Personality Restrictions" is more complex, and will further restrict certain hobby wants. The Arts & Crafts want "Get Picture Taken" is restricted to outgoing sims and the Film & Literature want "Write Novel" is for serious sims. For the Nature hobby, "Go Hiking" is for active sims, "Birdwatch" is for shy sims, "Hunt for Bugs" is for serious sims and "Catch Butterflies/Fireflies" is for playful sims.
Each flavour of the mod comes in two game versions for compatibility. The "AL Only" versions are for people who have Apartment Life but not Mansion & Garden Stuff. The "M&G" versions are for people who either have both AL and M&G, or who only have M&G. People with the Ultimate Collection should therefore use the M&G version.
I've also included text files containing my changes- see "Technical Details" for how to use these.
The mod doesn't delete any wants from the game, it only prevents them from being rolled, so if any of your sims have the wants when you first load the mod the wants will still function as normal.
Compatibility
Requires either AL (for the AL only version) or M&G (M&G version) or both (M&G version). Other than that, it is compatible with all other EPs and SPs but does not require any. If you only have FreeTime, see "Technical Details" for instructions on how to create your own version.
You can only have one version of the WantTrees.package in your game, so this will conflict with any other replacement, such as syberspunk's Teen Enabled Adult Wants. I'm not aware of any other WantTree edits compatible with AL/M&G.
The mod should not conflict with mods that alter wants without replacing the WantTrees.package, such as Pescado's "wfsanity" mod. I've been running the personality version of my mod alongside wfsanity for several months now without any problems. Any mod that alters the hobby wants would override my changes, but to my knowledge there are no mods that do this.
Installation
The WantTrees.package included in each download must replace the existing WantTrees.package in your installation folder (not your usual downloads folder).
Important: make a backup of the original file first in case you later want to revert the changes.
The location will be different depending on your latest game.
For AL only:
C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Apartment Life\TSData\Res\Wants
For M&G:
C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff\TSData\Res\Wants
For UC:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Fun with Pets\SP9\TSData\Res\Wants
For the Store Edition:
C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Store Edition\TSData\Res\Wants
If you want to remove the mod, delete my version and replace it with your original backup.
Warnings
Remember to back up your original file! If you fail to back up the original and then later decide to remove the mod you will need to re-install your game.
This is an edit of a core file, so may have more potential risk than other mods. The way I've edited the package should reduce this risk, as no data is actually deleted from the game, just hidden. However, this is still a mod that you use at your own risk, and you should always test new mods out in a testing hood first.
In particular, take care if you choose to edit the file yourself, and don't make changes you're not confident about.
Technical Details
Each hobby has its own tree within the WantTrees.package. Instance numbers for these can be found in the "Text Files" download.
To prevent the wants from being rolled, I edited the age restrictions for each want to be false for each life stage. The wants will now be prevented from rolling for all ages in the same way that they were previously blocked for toddlers.
To make your own version, find each of the hobby want trees and change the age settings for each want you are removing. If the "superZero" setting is ever set to false you will need to change it to true.
It's important to remove each version of the same want, or the settings will conflict and your sims will have blank want panels. So, for instance, you can't decide that the Science hobby should be the only one able to trigger "Talk about Hobby". The "Blog about (Hobby)" wants are unique and can therefore have different settings from each other.
In order to restrict by personality, change the "superZero" setting to true then change one personality trait to true and the others to false. If "superZero" is set to false the personality settings will only weight the chances of the want rolling, but I don't know the details of this. "Talk about Hobby" and the various "Blog about (Hobby)" wants are apparently weighted for outgoing and shy sims respectively, but from my experience in-game this appears to be a very weak (or possibly inactive) weighting.
You can find the text containing my changes in the downloads section. This doesn't change between versions, so you can use it to replace the want trees in FT-only games.
As an aside, I'd recommend having a look through the want trees- there are some interesting details there. For example, did you know that being left at the altar can trigger a want to get a dog or cat? Such a sad little detail!