I've been reading an old blog where the Simmer plays Lifetime Wants in an interesting way. I hardly ever play them or take notice of them so I was wondering what other people do.

Do you play Lifetime Wants? If so, how do you incorporate them into your gameplay?

Have you ever achieved one of the really difficult ones, like having 20 pet best friends or 5 top-level businesses?

Do you use custom LTWs? How do you like them?

Do you stick with the random assignment, or do you like to choose your Sim's LTW?

I hardly ever play them or take notice of them either. I don't want a bunch of sims at the top of careers. I like a challenge, not a ton of rich sims.
I just don't really care for them. I've done them before but now I don't bother.
HAHAHA no. I've never achieved one of the really difficult ones lol.
I don't use custom LTWs.
I've chosen sim's LTW in the past but now I just ignore it.

I used to play with them, but I mostly played family or knowledge sims, maybe with the odd other aspiration, so I would very often reroll my knowledge sims to get the LTW for filling up their skill points to max. It was really the only one I cared to fill up. For family sims, I think there's one or two I used to default to, can't remember now. The work-related ones I usually found quite boring, because I've never really found it fun to play with jobs where my sims are gone several hours a day.

I think I've achieved a few of the difficult LTWs at some point, but honestly can't remember since it's been maybe 12-15 years since I used to actually care about LTWs.

I don't use custom LTWs, because I don't play with them any longer. Some of them do seem a bit fun, though.

I've sometimes considered playing family-style/legacy again, and have done it a couple times, but I kind of default back to taking pictures. These days I tend to just play TS4 a few hours to partially satisfy that want, because my picture-taking urge is a lot less present there (The gameplay is generally much more fun in TS2, but I get too attached to my sims, so I end up with a huge neighborhood with sims who never die and have 10+ kids each - have 20 instead of 6 grandkids could easily be a LTW, and I'd nail it every time, except I don't usually let my sims become elders, so that's a bit of an issue... ).

LTW:s used to stress me out so much when I first encountered them . They felt like something I had to do to keep my sims happy and if I couldn't achieve them I felt like I had failed my sims. They were one of the things introduced in an EP that made me go back to playing base game only for many years (not the only thing, I simply couldn't cope with playing with all the EP:s back then). But after coming back to all the EP:s after many years I think they're mostly a fun challenge. I suppose they still feel like a bit of a novelty to me. I don't like the pets wants or the romance sim wants, so it depends on how much I like the sim whether I try to fulfill them or not. I have once managed 20 pet best friends for a favourite sim, but never raising 20 puppies or kittens. I've tried, but failed! 5 top level businesses is actually my favourite LTW to try for, but I have strict rules about who I will fulfill it for. For example, not two sims at the same time in the same neighbourhood. No sim with primary or secondary pleasure aspiration and no sim with primary romance aspiration and no secondary aspiration or with a grilled cheese secondary (based on earlier bad experiences). I've fulfilled this want four times now, I think. Maybe five, I don't remember exactly.

I don't always bother with the LTW:s, though. I think mostly I use them as a way to understand who my sims are - depending on the whole combination of LTW, daily wants, autonomous behaviour, interests, personality points and hobbies, I get an idea of their personality. An LTW of maxing all skills for an easily distracted and somewhat lazy playful sim with cuisine as a one true hobby is probably just a longtime daydream, That sim dreams of achieving something that they're probably not prepared to work for, like many humans I know, and that says something about them as a person. I usually don't reroll LTW:s because of this, I want my sims to stay the persons they are whether they like it or not. I've never tried any custom wants and I don't particularly feel a need for it either.

Yeah, I play with LTWs all the time. I like having them, as it's kinda like a background side goal for me to work on in addition to a sim's story. And even if I don't actually have a sim work toward it, I will change it to something I think "fits." It's part of a sim's personality, imo. For the longest time I've been playing with Squinge's Any LTW for All, or whatever it's called, because I don't think LTW is tied to aspiration, especially since so many are career based. Like what, only Romance/Pleasure sims want to be Rock Stars? I don't think so, so I modded that out and quite liked the variety it gave. I try to only change LTWs if it's something completely out of character or if there's too many with the same one.

My only real concern was that Eaxis got lazy and failed to introduce new, non-career LTWs with each EP. We should have gotten more LTWs focused on hobbies and vacations, maybe even creatures. So I'm sure you can imagine that I am very excited to try Lamare's new LTW mod. I haven't loaded up the game in weeks, though, so I haven't had a chance.

I also have to say that I have probably gotten each LTW at least once, except for the Pet ones. I have a like/hate relationship with the Pets EP. While I have occasionally changed my mind about pets and introduced one into a family here or there, I've never had so many that 20 pet best friends could conceivably be a thing. I'm not even sure there are enough strays to make that happen! Otherwise, I've been simming for so long that I have done most of them at least a couple of times, if only for the challenge. Now I'm at a point where it's a bit about what I like to do, too, so while I may give a sim a particular LTW, I may not attempt it if I don't really want to. Like the Pleasure LTWs--those can be quite tedious, but I have done them. I might look into lowering them, now that I think about it. Because it's really not a bad idea, it's just that, unless the player is specifically gunning for them, it really won't happen. IDK why the numbers for the date LTWs are so high, but yeah, 30 first dates is much more reasonable to achieve during normal gameplay.

On the other hand, with my mod set up, I should probably increase almost everything else. Earning 100,000 is way too easy after 18 years of play and with ACR and other romance mods, 20 lovers/woohoos is nothing. And the Grilled Cheese one I have done before, but I rarely have Grilled Cheese sims. And I rarely do 5 Top Businesses because, while I can run businesses fairly well, I usually like to spread out that gameplay. And I don't often have a story reason for one sim to own five businesses; that type of thing usually just doesn't make sense for whatever I have going on in a hood, storywise.

The only thing I haven't done is some of those impossible wants--30 grandchildren and be abducted 3 or 5 times. I have done 10 kids before, but I've never played a family that has 10 kids long enough for a grandparent to get that 30 grandkid want. I usually move on to a different hood or household way before that happens. Plus, ten kids is honestly tedious to play and then I feel bad because there's absolutely no way I'm letting them all start their own families, . Maybe some of them will get to marry into another family in the neighborhood, but still. It's a lot. I usually do six as the max, for the Marry 6 Kids LTW, unless a family is most of the way there when a Family sim rolls the want.

In Arundel I play with the custom lifetime wants that the medieval careers spawn-but you can't have more than 1 King or Queen. They're mostly career oriented LTW and I'm keeping them restricted in certain careers-like Politics.

And then I have to decide who gets promoted to the next rank because someone has to become Lord Mayor-the more ambitious one will-that looks like Amy Klein right now-it looks like she and William Potter will be in contention for the top position of Ruler. May the better person win!

As for the family LTWs, nobody is gonna have 6 kids-there is a child limit in this town..sorry, pixels!

I only really make an active effort to fulfill them every once in a while. For some reason becoming Poseidon's right hand seems to be the one I'm the most inclined to fulfill. That's also the only lifetime want I've actively assigned someone (Jill Smith, because of her bio).
Otherwise I tend to forget what people's ltw even is. Random career related ones, for instance, that don't feel relevant to the sim in question. Those I just ignore.
I do sometimes use ltw's more as a guideline, like if they want 50 dream dates I won't bother, but it does tell me they want to date a lot, marry off six kids means they want to have multiple children and so on. Which also feels realistic. My sim who wants to own five top-rated businesses probably won't fulfill that, but it's more of a pipedream and hopefully she's satisfied enough just running the businesses she has.
I haven't tried custom ltw's yet but I'm curious about them, because the ones in the game aren't all that interesting after this long.

I've mostly played TS3 up until now and in that game LTW's are in much more focus than in TS2, so I still have the habit of taking them very seriously. I feel a bit guilty when I ignore them, haha.
But I thought they couldn't be changed in TS2?

When I decide on careers and so on for my sims I usually look at personality, interests, hobbies and LTWs. And then I use some of those things (or all of them) as inspiration for what kind of life they will live.

^ There's only one way (I think?) you can change the LTW without directly cheating or using a mod in TS2, and that way doesn't leave you with much in the way of options (the "ReNuYuSenso Orb" aspiration reward, it lets you change the aspiration - and the LTW together with it. There's possibly one other technically non-cheaty way, but honestly unsure. There's a few ingame cheaty methods, but you need TestingCheats for that).

Several mods let you reroll the LTW, that's the easiest way, and much less volatile than the aspiration rewards (5 uses, and the sim needs gold or better aspiration or you risk them getting negative effects, which can be fun if you do it for the sake of the storyline, not so fun if you just want to change their aspiration or LTW).

career LTW just make it easy for me.
now when a sim wants a whole country of babies.... I get scared.

... Mine usually got a whole country of kids in each single family, let aloen the whole neighborhood, and that wasn't even to fulfill their LTW (I had several families with 12-14 kids back in the days. The "have 10 kids" want was a frequent fulfilled wish for my family sims). It made even the hardiest family sim get the "have baby" fear, which they tend to get roughly after baby 10-11 or so. I mean, I guess those sims have the courage to say when enough is enough?

Worse than that, I used to make sure the toddlers had all their skills, send the whole village to Uni, and if I gave any of them the knowledge skill, I usually re-rolled until they got the "max all skills" want, which I of course would have them do. They started out in their toddler years, so by the time Uni finished, most of them were pretty much finished with their skills, so definitely why it was my favorite. Didn't have to worry about parent skilling (they were perma-platinum, too), and could concentrate on the next generation.

Nowadays I tend to calm it down a bit with 2-6 kids. 10 is a bit over-the-top. I don't care about the LTWs now, but it was fun while it lasted.

I'll just change it if it's not something that can be done in my town most of the time though it might stay a few times for story purposes like the sim who failed to fill the LTW.I use Mods to fix that issue anyways because I want them not linked to aspiration and also want to change them if I got one not fitting the situation like getting ones for top ranking businesses in my Pleasantview game when the town is just starting out as the couple I'm playing will be the only residents for at least that first year.

Do you play Lifetime Wants? If so, how do you incorporate them into your gameplay?

In my old play style, sometimes I would "cheat" and give a Sim a LTW I wanted them to have, Paranormal or Natural Science for example, to give them an excuse to get those careers to get the career rewards and the additional Aspiration Points to get Elixir of Life and all that fun stuff. After playing with a wants based style over the past 1-2 years, my Sims never actually reached their LTW because they never rolled any wants with anything to do with it. I began to care less and less about what it actually was in the end.. It's kinda sad. I'm planning to do a mixture of wants based and my usual play style nowadays, just so my Sims do what they want whilst I also do what I want. Fun for both of us!

Have you ever achieved one of the really difficult ones, like having 20 pet best friends or 5 top-level businesses?

I've never achieved any of the pet LTWs because there never seems to be enough pets in my hood(s) to even manage half way for this LTW... Even with an Uberhood. I can't remember if I've achieved the 5 Top-Level Businesses one though, so just in case I haven't, I might as well get started now! ... I have however managed the 20 Simultaneous Lovers & Woohoo's though, I know that for sure because I have a lot of fun playing with Romance sims. I really want to do the 50 1st Dates and 50 Dream Dates one with two Pleasure Sims. They will be the ultimate couple ever, totally devoted to each other and everything!!

Do you use custom LTWs? How do you like them?

I'm a very indecisive person so I have to be careful with things like this unless I know I'll never remove it. It's why I don't have custom foods, custom memories, custom careers etc. If anyone ever makes the "Have 6 Children Abducted by Aliens" as a custom LTW, that will definitely make it into my game!

Do you stick with the random assignment, or do you like to choose your Sim's LTW?

Sometimes I will choose it myself depending if I have a plan for the Sim or if I feel it doesn't fit the Sim. If that's the case, then I'll check their interests and decide on a new one. That was before Lamare made their Lifetime Want Chooser. Ever since I have installed that mod, it has been an easier task and I don't think I'll ever play without it now.

Thanks to the new mod, I can actually complete LTWs. I edited the LTWs to the amounts of my liking and now my sims can died from old age happily.

I enjoy the custom LTWs as well. "Win fights against Different Sims" is my favorite one.