Is it possible to restore an individual Sims' Wants and Fears (or replace a Sim entirely) in SimPE to a recent backup? What occurred is that I found one of my CAS-created Sims' SWAF was 'blanded' while I was playing through rotations for other households in my neighbourhood. This occurred between January 26th and 27th, for which I have backups for (I back up my game before playing once every day I play - better be safe than sorry). Is it possible to extract the one Sims' own SWAF from my January 26th backup in SimPE and restore it over their current?

This is sort of a follow up my original issue captured in my thread regarding Sims Rolling Bland Wants and Fears in my game. I have still been playing Sims 2 Super Collection on the same neighbourhood for a while now and still can't absolutely pinpoint what has been causing my Sims' wants to go bland, yet I have been tracking it for months now (and have captured literally tons of screenshots for my own tracking purposes). All I can ascertain is that Sims are blanded at some moment when they load as a visitor (including off-lot) on another lot.

I've attached screenshots from last night when I went to check on him and the wants he rolled when he woke up that day. I've also attached screenshots from when I played his household on January 25th. The fear of his son receiving a failing report card is no longer present, and he rolled encouragement wants upon waking up which is something common amongst my blanded parents (as they don't roll a single milestone-related want for their children). Furthermore, he was still rolling the "go fishing" want related to the season being summer during a mid-season rotation (I play each household 2 days each). Again, my blanded sims only roll seasonal-related wants on the rounds when there is a change in seasons. I have several other screenshots captured to support this claim, including ones of this specific sim in question. He also rolled the want to "play catch" with his son, which is a want I have literally never seen another adult sim roll (and I know, I have many screenshots of their wants).

For some reason, my game loves to select him as a frequent walk-by and I've noticed that this is a source of my 'blanding' issue so I recently installed Midge's edited Visitor Controller to try to start preventing Local Walk-bys in general. I even quit the household without saving in an effort to prevent this sim from blanding. I must have missed him as a passer-by in the last two days as I did not set up the Visitor Controller on every household I played (as I want to have some hope that certain sims won't show up).

I've also noticed that the game also selects newly aged Sims to be frequent walk-bys as well. For example, I noticed the same teen Sims pass by some lots 4 to 5 times a single day. I'm aware that this randomization issue has been resolved in LazyDuchess' RPC Launcher that I can't download unfortunately as I am a Mac player. It is also possible that this is related to Super Collection and the combination of mods that I have. I have yet to have

Should I just come to terms with him being bland?

Hey there, i'm also a Mac user playing the Super Collection and I was just reading your old thread from 2021 about bland wants when I came across this new(er) thread and just wanted to say i'm experiencing the same issue with bland wants.

I was going to PM you to see if you ever found a fix or cause, looks like you may have isolated the cause and i'm now wondering if you ever found an answer to this question about restoring a backup? If so, that seems like the issue would be pretty much isolated, correct?

Bland wants tend to be caused by the sim either not having enough triggers for other wants, or from mods that modify wants to make them either appear less or not at all.

Some sims may have special triggers for various wants, which causes those to roll more often (if they already have skill points or badges, they'll more often roll for getting more points/higher badges. If they have kids and a good relationship with them, they'll more often roll wants related to the kids). Some events trigger wants for more than one sim (like when a baby grows to a toddler, and both parents plus the toddler will get all the "teach X/learn to...[toddler skill]" wants)

Replacing the sim with the other one would likely cause issues with that sim (especially if you did it by replacing the character files in the Neighborhood folder, don't do that, those two sims are not the same even if they may seem to be, and you'd likely see some ingame issues related to that sim since a lot of their info would be wrong compared to other sims). Blending info, or at least adding to the info, I'd imagine would depend how you did it (SimPE or some similar method where you have full control over what happens is probably the best way. You may also have to take into account the other sims who may have related triggers, or they won't get wants for the same thing).

Depending on how much gameplay you went through and how many changes happened, you could restore the backup and play through those days, and see if the wants course-corrected on their own.

Thank you for the insight on wants! I am still concerned as this issue has been reported by some users playing on the Mac-exclusive Super Collection.

For example, I have been playing with the Grunt family and Buzz never rolled a want for Tank to age up well, nor did he roll a want for Tank to join the military career. All he got was wants to throw a party, gain a skill point or meet someone new.

I spent some time today using testingcheats to fiddle with the aspiration meter level and change between lifetime wants and it seems negative a aspiration meter will trigger more of the 'big' wants, but even then they are still generic big wants like 'get married' or 'throw a great party'. As soon as they get into a positive aspiration meter, they roll the same wants about eating foods, meeting someone new and working out. Surely a family sim should care about their kids and not just want to marry any random sim, buy a tv or meet a new person? I'm going to play around with it some more and see what else I can do.

Usually if this happens in my game, I tend to make my sims interact a bit more, or do stuff I know trigger the want trees. You may just have to experiment a bit with it.

It's a bit strange that the sim wants to marry "someone else" if they're already married (could depend on aspiration) - is it just a generic want to get married, or do they want to get married to a particular sim? Which aspiration do they have?

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The wants in TS2 work a bit like "trees". One action causes some wants, and fulfilling those wants causes other wants.

It often depends on their aspiration, but also on relationships and recent stuff they've done, so if they don't interact much with their kids or partner for a while, they'll roll fewer wants related to those. They sometimes "revert" back to the basic aspiration wants if nothing else triggers wants.

Sims are more likely to roll wants based on their aspiration. A family sim is generally more likely to want family-based things and romance wants toward their partner, while a romance sim is more likely to roll romance wants toward their partner and also other people, but not as likely to roll family-based wants or wanting to have kids - they often fear having kids.

The wants also follow each other in succession - sometimes you'll see a clear line through the wants-tree, other times it's more diffuse, or even very unclear what causes wants to appear, but one very common want tree is if you have two sims in love (especially family sims), they'll roll wants to massage/hug/etc, and if you fulfill each "step" or make sure their romantic needs are met, they'll roll wants for kissing, then woohoo, and when their relationship is high enough (if they're still in a romantic-driven mood), they roll for engagement, then marriage, and kids. When a baby is born, you'll get wants for buying baby/toddler stuff that you don't already have. Almost immediately after the baby grows to toddler, you get the toddler wants, for both the parents and toddler (and these tend to disappear fast for the parents, so can be an idea to lock them).

Hi there, I'm still alive and funny enough I actually generated a new test hood recently and have been conducting a larger scale wants study. My original hood corrupted I believe as some households now crash when trying to save. I believe it expanded to an amount of character files that was too much to handle, regardless of downloads folder size. I do still play with Pescado's wfsanity which affects and removes some wants from rolling.

In this test hood I have been playing a 2-day rotation of households (some very large with 8+ sims), with only 5 in the main hood and 1-2 in the university sub-hood. But I do see still that some bland-ness occurs, but it is minimal. The main difference I have discovered is that I am obtaining the "Get Married to Sim" want, or forcing it upon my couples. I often reset love flag using the Sim Blender/Manipulator and Midge's Develop Love interaction then fulfilling the Engagement want using testing cheats and re-adding the engaged flag with the Sim Blender/Manipulator. The Get Married want always rolls a "have a baby" want which then leads to toddler skills. I would say about 80-90% of my adult sims are rolling most of the child-rearing wants. My Romance sims have only rolled the want to teach their toddler to Talk from my test hood so far (I don't have a lot of romance sims though). I also have a Family sim who is fearful of being caught cheating which has never rolled for me before, and this is because she has two loves and still often rolls the want to talk to the other love (as this is the only thing that wfsanity allows whilst the love is not on the lot - the love was once and she rolled wants to flirt with him).

I have not banned playables using the Visitor Controller from being walk-bys. I still find that some blending does occur. I have noticed that teens playables who are frequent walk-bys never roll the Graduation want once they enter their final semester in University, this is usually rolled upon completing the Junior year (I play with Cyjon's Semester Changes) and for all aspirations (not sure about Pleasure though). Knowledge sims will always roll an extra want to graduate with honours, they are often the only sims to do so (Fortune do occasionally roll this extra want). I find that gradual 2-day rotation does drown out the milestone wants, like the "Get Married to Sim" want for example, as my Young Adults often fear being left at the altar for about 2 rotations before the fear disappearing (if they are proposed to in the Freshman or Sophomore years). Some teen townies who I have made playable Young Adult (and are often frequent walk-bys as teens) will often roll all the University-related wants throughout.

I have captured a large amount of screenshots documenting this process for anybody if they are curious. Here is a general synopsis of my observations (as I have found that the small number of households has not been allowing for any blanding)
• Sims who have been married so far in my game (usually both have rolled the "Get Married to Sim" want) will ALWAYS roll the Kiss X, Flirt with X, and Talk to X almost every morning, and when they return from work for their spouses (this is established by getting married, engaged sims never roll the Kiss X want randomly unless prompted by the flirt want first [Romance sims are an exception])
• Buying a cooking appliance or a counter will often trigger the "Gain a Cooking Skill Point" want for 1,000 Asp Points
• Buying any game object will often trigger the "Gain a Logic Skill Point" want for 1,000 Asp Points
• Buying a bookcase will often trigger the "Gain a Cooking Skill Point", "Gain a Mechanical Skill Point", AND/OR "Gain a Cleaning Skill Point" wants for 1,000 Asp Points
• Fortune Sims will often roll wants to buy better objects only if cheaper variants are purchased within the rotation, for example toilets, mirrors, counters, chairs, beds, etc.. The only exceptions I find are usually for decorations, armchairs, sofas, electronics, and fireplaces, they will often roll the wants to purchase the most expensive variants when the household has 3k+ Simoleons.
• Knowledge Sims may randomly roll 2,500 Asp Point wants to "Gain a X Skill Point" in any random skill, but this is only ever triggered while they have been hardcore skilling. This kind of makes sense.
• Romance Sims always roll the "Fall in Love with X" want immediately after becoming best friends with X. If X suits their Gender Preference(s), and this want really does persist unlike others.
• Popularity/Fortune Sims should always roll the want to sell a bestselling novel or to sell a masterpiece once immediately maxing the Creativity skill (I saw a post on Tumblr recently saying that this is developer intent and written into the code - wish I could locate it now)

Thanks all for reading and let me know if you require further elaborations. I too find that the wants system in Super Collection and maybe even for the Mac-port in general was slightly altered as I have even gone back on my discs before and was able to see similar occurrences.

I'm not sure why you think this want progression is out of the ordinary or not the way it works on PC. This is exactly how it works for everyone.

Generally this is how it would work ingame with the want trees, so that sounds pretty much like I've found in my game, too - I've had all the EPs since 2009, so there are a few more wants in there than for the SC.

I've found that some of the wants will reroll, but generally if they haven't been acted upon until they're rerolled (which usually happens at least once a day - upon reentering a lot, sometime during the morning, or when the sim gets up after a longer sleep, or similar), they won't always roll the same wants, and it's less likely they will roll the same wants (hence, always immediately lock wants that don't tend to reroll too often, and you intend to fulfill. Marriage/have kid will usually reroll if you do trigger-actions, but toddler teaching wants don't always reroll after the first day (they may reroll if one gets fulfilled). Some wants roll once, and are never to be seen again if allowed to disappear.

Bland wants (wants that don't seem to follow this logic, or just "waters out" into wants a single sim would get their first day) could mean something's going on with the triggers for the wants, or the relations. If you reset the relationship flags ingame a lot, make sure they reset for both sims, and that you don't accidentally mix in other sims. That could cause some iffy wants with one-sided relationships or stray loves. Likely what's happened is that their marriage was reset but the game didn't set the status properly, so it doesn't quite recognize them as married even if all the icons say they are. I've had a couple weird ones that didn't quite register after messing about with the Insimenator or SimBlender, either marriages with some issues, or kids/parents that didn't quite see each other as such.



Some of these don't always happen, or happen more often for some aspirations than others.

For the Creativity skill, I think the sim needs to have at least written/painted something, and even then I've rarely seen that want.

Toddler skills - for parents they're blink and you'll miss them. They'll roll once, maybe twice if you're lucky or if you've fulfilled one that already rolled, and then you'll never see them again for that toddler. It's the same with the "Grow up well" and "Throw party" - I remember getting the "grow up well" ones for some of my sims, but the "Throw party" didn't always show. For adults to get wants based on their kids, like scholarships etc- I think it's somewhat relationship-based (but not sure).

And just remember that one, maybe even two or three sims don't always make a pattern. If you see the wants sometimes but not always, your game likely works fine. If you never see the wants, check your mods - some could be changing the frequency and/or modifying if the wants even show up at all. Check without mods if you're unsure, so you get a baseline of how your game behaves. If more wants show up where they're supposed to, it's likely an issue with mods.

Wow, this thread has turned out to be really informative and useful for me, especially getting back into TS2 after so long - thank you!



Sorry, he isn't married already, but he has 3 children and didn't roll any wants relating to them when I switched his aspiration to family while testing. He is popularity normally. Back on his normal aspiration, he never rolled any wants relating to seeing Tank (his favourite) go to university, grow up well or join the military career. If fact he never rolls any wants relating to any of his other kids and none of his wants even acknowledge them no matter how much they interact.



So before you got into the habit of using Sim Blender to reset the love flags, were your sims never rolling wants for this? I am moving towards proposing in my game at the moment and am waiting to see if they will roll any wants relating to this. At the moment sims seem to never roll any wants related to their partners when they live off-lot. Even when they see eachother but aren't on dates, they get no wants relating to them. The only time they get roll wants relating to their partners is on dates.




I've noticed this with one of my families! The popularity aspiration wife has 2 kids but only rolls wants about flirting, playing etc. with her husband. I'll see if, as they get progress towards teenagers, she rolls any wants about them aging up well or getting a good report card. I first played this family out of CAS on the brand new game and they had a lot of parent wants like teaching the toddler skills and seeing the kid get an A report card.

I also have a single mother sim who just rolls 4 wants relating to social interactions with her kid evey morning (nothing about private school or good grades yet through).



Thank you for all the information you've done on this, it's fascinating to read helpful to know! I'm sad the old ports are also affected, as I did think about cracking out my old discs and playing those instead (i'm still on Mojave). Whilst searching online to see if anyone else has experienced it, I found 1 other thread also on the Mac SC from a few years ago, but also this person in 2008, also playing on a Mac.

I've been considering a bootcamp partition to finally get my chance to play with Freetime, Apartment Life and the beloved Ikea stuff after all these years, and if I do I will be keeping an eye on if/how the wants differ there.



I haven't touched relationship flags and even removed all my mods for a few hours of playing and was still seeing the same thing. The main thing i'm noticing is parents wants just not acknowledging their kids after a while, but also other sims in the same household doing the same thing. Buzz Grunt (aspiration sim) only rolls wants about making friends and throwing parties, nothing about any of his 3 kids ageing up well, going to university, getting married etc. so far.



Ops older thread was playing on a rotation between a bunch of different households and they noticed that they all started rolling the generic, bland wants after a while. There's also this thread of another SC Mac player expriencing the same thing.



I actually removed all my mods for a good few hours of gameplay and it made no change to the wants as far as I saw.

I do also have another computer with TS2 installed and unplayed/modded, so I am tempted to play just the Grunt's again (and only them) to use use as a test to see what happens want-wise in comparison to my game.

Generally I am noticing very generic wants and parents wants ignoring their kids completely, but i've still got plenty of playing to do still. In general gameplay, it seems like dates work fine (want-wise), but sims will not usually roll big wants with specific sims in mind. By this, I mean no wants to see X age up well or to go on a date with X or fight X etc. I have seen generic big wants like 'go to private school' or 'go steady' appear, but not the versions of those wants with specifc sims in mind (except kiss, make out etc. on dates).

As I carry on playing, i'm curious to see whether sims do roll any of these, as well as if the 'big wants' that should appear, do. It's hard to feel like i'm not just playtesting at times though lol, but I have also enjoyed focusing on a sims wants and trying to use them to guide my actions way more. Even if it's not working properly, this system is still SO GOOD compared to anything in TS3 or 4.

It could be one of the Mac-spesific issues with SC.

Could also be some latent issues with the original sims shipped with the neighborhoods. There's all sorts of weird issues going on there.

Does it also happen with sims you've made in CAS? Those should be a "blank slate" compared to the original sims, and shouldn't have any potential bugs in their wants/memories/etc.

Oh yeah I am aware there's a lot of issues with the Maxis neighbourhoods. I have 2 CAS families who also seem to be experiencing bland wants and ignoring their kids.

One CAS family with 2 adults and 2 kids has the mother not rolling any wants related to her kids at all anymore, she just constantly rolls wants to flirt, talk, hug etc. with her husband. The other CAS family is a single mum who only rolls wants relating to talking, playing etc. with her kid (but nothing big like A+ report card or private school) and the odd bland ones like gain a skill point. She is a family sim so i'm hoping she rolls some wants relating to getting married and having another kid at some point. It is still relatively early days with both families in my rotations, so I have some more playtesting to do there and see what develops.

Not entirely sure what triggers the private school or A+ report card, but they don't always show, and it could be a trigger in relation to the kids (for instance if they need to get a B report card, or get help with homework, or something like that). Been ages since I've seen the private school want, so I think that one probably also has a trigger, because if/when it showed, I think it used to show up at least a few days into a direct-from-CAS play (haven't played too much want-based in a while).

I tend to give my sim family or knowledge aspirations (used to often do a mix with FreeTime), and the knowledge aspiration sims frequently roll skill point wants in between various other wants.

It also depends what you act on - if the sims don't roll wants related to their kids, have them play and interact in other ways that often show in the wants, and also see if you can fulfill a want or two for one of the kids to get the wants re-rolling. Sometimes the wants just get a bit stuck in a loop.

Thanks all for the replies above.


Yeah I totally understand this point. I notice that all Sims who are present on the lot have their wants re-roll once the baby grows-up to a toddler. So this is when I find the toddler skills appear. I do agree with the "lock them now, or else" opinion, but in my old neighbourhood those wants simply never appeared. I seriously believe now it was just do to the sheer size of the rotation, i.e. the number of households which I had which could have been around 40+ which I played 2 days each. I have even seen the "Throw Birthday Party" want appear AFTER an adult sim aged up to an elder and there was not any other potential candidate in the household for this to apply towards.


Midge's Develop Love Interaction forces the game fall in love mechanic, which Sim Blender/Manipulator do not perform. They only set flags, so there are specific wants that I find are triggered by Developing Love and fulfilling the marriage and engagement wants afterwards. This triggers wants to roll every morning relating to kiss/flirt/dance/give backrub to their respective spouses and then other random wants roll in afterwards. This is what I meant.


So far in my test hood, the private school wants have always rolled immediately upon toddler growing up into a child. It did take some time for some Family/Knowledge sims to roll the want to teach them to study, usually it required homework present on the lot (likely due to wfsanity). However, one notable Popularity Sim (and former townie), rolled the wants to teach his twin children to study immediately after both toddlers grew up into children which I found incredibly interesting.


So I totally see these wants appear only if another interaction occurs in the same day, but this often does not get carried over to the next rotation session. This is why I often reference a 'blank' or 'bland' state. But in my current test hood I still have some spontaneity occurring, but still less from playables who are frequent passer-bys on other lots. For example, the grandparents (Family & Fortune) have no longer been rolling the marriage daily kiss/flirt wants with one another right now but that is likely as there are higher priority wants taking precedence (Relative gets Married/Engaged, Have a Grandchild, etc.).

When you reload a lot, the wants often rerolll, so any spesific wants the sims had tend to get replaced with somewhat more generic ones. Depending on how long your rotations with each household are (a sim-day/a sim-week/other), this could be part of what you're seeing.

There's also a possible issue with sim overpopulation in Mac games due to the limitations on open files, which can cause files not not save all the info properly (disappearing sims and similar, but not sure if it would cause issues with wants/memories/etc. without it also causing issues elsewhere).

But really, it does sound like the wants show up fine for most sims, but randomly go a bit iffy. If you can in some or another way trigger back wants that aren't generic, even just a few, then it may just be some random bug or a spesific Mac issue.

this would be my first suspicion. if you have access to simPE, i would recommend opening your neighborhood package there and looking through the SWAF files. specifically, the lists of triggers on each sim, keeping an eye out for any obvious omissions or discrepencies (e.g. sims you know have experienced certain milestones but do not have those listed in their SWAF).

since macs have a hard limit on the number of files that can be open at once, and ts2 neighborhood packages contain A LOT of files (especially a heavily populated neighborhood), it's very possible some of these files (specifically the SWAFs) are being deleted/reset/altered/corrupted in some way, and are therefore unable to properly keep track of your sims' triggers.

So this was one of my suspicions closer to the end as my past neighbourhood reached approx 500 character files before it began crashing when trying to save. I thought it was related to my downloads folder size, so I did try to compress and reduce file count by merging downloads but the crashing continued. I never figured out why the crashing was occurring but I figured it had something to do with my MacBook not being able to process the scale of the large hood.

What also occurred immediately before this crashing was that several sims in the game, mostly newborns but also some fresh character files, had their memories wiped entirely. I managed to track it down to a specific list of character files, which were all generated after a dog had been created in my game. I restored their memories using the Memory Manipulator and SimPE and also noticed that their "Sim Loaded" token was removed (which I did not restore using SimPE). This is more of an off-topic note but could be related to the SWAF not working entirely.

I have reviewed some sims' SWAF in SimPE before and was not entirely sure what to look for. I know it acts as a log for all Wants and Fears, but based on what is suggested, the milestone wants can be fulfilled without being rolled based on the discussion above. It does seem to be the case in my current test hood (married townies are rolling the daily want to kiss their spouse), but I do see some variances as some of the Gen 2 playables do not exhibit the same behaviour (rolling the "Have a Baby" want after getting married, etc.). I will say that sometimes I am pleasantly surprised with my Gen 2 playables right now in my test hood as they occasionally have been rolling the 'milestone' wants when I thought they were bland. I guess something could have been corrupted in my previous hood (although I have been avoiding all the phone calling and large family reunion parties in the test hood).