I do enjoy directing one person, mentally switching to a first-person view. Playing a single person's household like Lothar's is calm and relaxing. But keeping track of a proper family can be exhausting.

Oh my god, I thought I was the only one with this problem! Whenever my teens take someone home from school, it's almost always a Three Lakes local- Opal Raymond, Gordon Nott, Elizabeth Ng, or Juan Harris. How did they even get here from Sim Canada? And seemingly every teen boy in Greater Pleasantview heart-farts over Opal. Funny enough, outside of the Three Lakes quartet, Sophie Miguel is actually the townie teen sims bring home the most from school.

Omg, I was wrong. Eating is not the most illogical activity. It is the Stomping of the Foot a.k.a Route Failure Feedback. "Rowlah, Higher/Higher". Or whatever children say in their screechy voice, or assertive elders who used to be opera singers. It also happens during eating besides numerous other occasions. I tried playing unmodified Apartments, where people are dumb again, and the racket was real.

The people could just wait a bit for the path to get cleared, or walk as near as possible to the target and show a silent thought bubble. But they waste their precious hours of life stuck on small porches, directing anger at their god, or waving their arms on a sofa sensing the intoxicating smell of distant weeds.

It's when a hard drive defragmenting program turns out to not be what it's advertised as and starts cleaning out files instead of just defragmentinf them resulting in my TS2 install directory becoming broken and having to be repaired.This happned with a fake defragmenting tool called Defraggler and I'm about to uninstall that one.

What I really hated was on the sims 2 pets for the PS2 was my sim was constantly eating even when not hungry. So I tried punishing him with eating over and over again until he got sick. Unfortunately he didn't get sick nor the A.I. wasn't learning from the mistake. This was way before I had the sims 2 PC game. (the real deal) apartment life.
Now that I have the ultimate collection my sims eat somewhat sensibly and gain weight from no exercise. Which is what the sims 2 pets was missing.
And they only had a single community lot where you could buy pet stuff which really was disappointing. Once I got apartment life, I was so happy to find out that you could make your own hood and lots of community lots. So in the end, sims 2 pets PS2 drove me to buy the sims 2 PC version and I never looked back.

In The Sims 1, getting the most out of your cooking was pretty important. I tried to buy the best stove, the best fridge, the best counter, the food processor. But in The Sims 2, fitness is such a thing that I feel like I have to constantly watch and make sure they don't overeat. It actually feels like a detriment if the food quality is too good. I have considered modding out the fitness altogether, but I don't really want to. I had a fat Sim who somehow appeared to lose weight until I changed his clothes and back again. Very strange.

Speaking of clothes... When my Sims bring someone home from work, I like having the townies wear their work clothes, but when it's a neighbor, it can be annoying. Like my Captain Hero is suddenly wearing a cop uniform, so I end up having to go to his house and reset and save agan.

Old complaint but I really want more interactions between non-adults. Like, toddlers peeking into the crib and watch the baby would be super cute.

I wish there was some way to teach my business-owning Sims a sense of priorities. When you're running the shop on your own, your priority must be the till. Cleaning and tidying the shop, and restocking empty shelves are no doubt important, but when there are customers queuing at the till, you must serve them -- promptly and politely.

When my Sims arrived at Scott Moore's shop in Poet Place, there was no sign of him. It turned out he was in the toilet. Whether he was using it or cleaning it I don't know. I suppose that wasn't too important to begin with, when no-one was waiting to pay, although personally I would prefer to be in the shop so I could keep an eye on what the customers were doing. But later, as customers began to queue at the till, Scott was first cleaning the shower, and then he went out into the garden to check things there. Twice I had to use Dolphin's Control this Sim to tell him to "Ring up these customers". When my Sims left there was still an increasingly restive queue of Sims waiting to pay.

When I'm playing Scott himself, he usually takes at least his eldest son Ross with him, and Ross (who has a silver cash register badge) operates the till quite efficiently. But when I'm playing other Sims and I send them to the shop, Scott turns up on his own. He has a bronze cash register badge now so he's better than he used to be, but customers continue to be justifiably dissatisfied with the speed of service. How can I teach him to prioritise his time?

"Scott, your customers must come first. Otherwise they'll go to Veronaville Market, or Pentameter Parkway, where they know the service will be much quicker."

@AndrewGloria -I used to have that issue playing businesses on my old computer and I ended up downloading the auto-cash register from Simlogical to fix that by having that in owned businesses to ring up customers.

You know, I wonder why so many simmers say uncontrolled sims act dumb in apartments and dorms. I have found that my sims act quite reasonably on their own. But maybe I have a mod that unknowingly also affects apartment behavior? Or maybe it's all in the building design? I definitely see American sensibilities in the routing behavior, too. When I think about things here and newer house design, it kinda makes sense that sims hate "small" hallways and stairwells. And I'm not going to lie, as a New Yorker, and as just a human in general--I've been pissed at people blocking sidewalks, standing in front of doorways, or walking the wrong way on a stairwell/escalator. So I can relate. I just don't wave my arms at the sky. But it makes sense that sims do--they know someone's up there who can fix it.

Anywho, for the overeating issue, I usually use BoilingOil's NoFreshFood to remove the seasons food bonus, because it just made food too filling. Sims could get by off of like one meal a day. After several years of use, I think I would prefer a mod that lessens the bonus, instead of eliminating it entirely, but at least now my sims actually have to cook and eat multiple meals. I also use Pescado's No Eat Crap, so that only fat and lazy sims overeat. Everyone else stops eating when they're full, and sims in general talk less when eating. Finally I also use Nysha's Townie Body Diversity, so that townies actually have a chance at being fat now, not just my playable sims. I like this because I feel like restaurant food is a bit less filling than sims' home cooked meals. Plus, it's not like sims order seconds when they eat out, so there's less opportunity for them to actually overeat. I don't ever recall my townies and uncontrolled playables getting fat from eating out all the time--I wish that were so!

It's always interesting to hear about others' playstyles. A few simmers have wished for a first person view and controls in the Hacks You'd Like to See thread, but I've never wanted that--I play a completely different way. I don't really role play as my sims or want to see things from their point of view, unless I'm taking pictures or something. "Watcher" really is a good way to describe my playing mindset. Or "Architect," I suppose, when I'm playing out a detailed storyline. And I like controlling multiple sims at once, too. Playing a family of about 3-6 sims is my sweet spot. I usually find playing just one sim boring, unless I've a highly intricate plot going on.

@AndrewGloria that sounds like that OFB bug where, when you visit an OFB shop with another Family, all the employees get reassigned. Or sometimes the manager, if you have one, randomly reassigns employees. Can't tell you how many times a manager has told an employee to stop being a cashier or restocking to tidy... nothing. Try Pescado's No Reassign; that way, sims should keep whatever assignments you've given them when you played them. And the auto cash register is good to use if the shop only has one sim, but if you want Scott to have his family help at the shop, maybe try Squinge's Hire Family Members (I don't think there's a newer version of this mod, so you should be okay with it). With that you can hire family members as employees--then the game should recognize them as such and they'll show up when other playables visit. Otherwise, I don't think the game considers family members as part of the business.

And @Neverwinter_Knight77, it sounds like a mod conflict, if you're sims are wearing an old uniform. But either way, you can always change a sim's outfit on the spot with ChristianLov’s Gussy-Up and Closet Plugins; I use the ones updated by Midgethetree here and here. With those you can buy clothes/jewelry, Plan Outfit, do Sim Surgery, or change the appearance of any sim. (Idk why the link isn't working, but in case it stays broken, here's a direct link to Closet Plugin and you can also find it under #mod: gussy up plugin, in case you want to see Midge's original post. The Closet Plugin lets you change clothes; the Gussy Plugin does all the other stuff.)

Oh, and for those who were annoyed about sims bringing home the same friend--there are mods for that. Twojeffs includes it in his School Bus and Homework mods, and Simler90 has a mod, too.

^ Well, my Strangetown is all summer all the time. So, in my apartment, I always have unplayed Sims spend all day in the hot tub and then get heatstroke or get struck by lightning (they always survive, because TS2 makes it so hard to die).

Having a finished lot and a finished description but absolutely zero motivation to go into a copy and stage the photos to go along with the upload.........

I wanted to play live mode in my game and ended up building a starter home instead because it would take up less time.I couldn't play live like I wanted to because it's getting late and I don;t want to stay up all night.

Unrealistic bodyshapes are my peeve today. So many outfits for the fuller breasted female bodyshapes have the breasts shaped in a way that breasts just do not sit naturally with a bra or under a top. It's like all clothes are painted on a nude.

Then today I saw a larger female bodyshape with a waist so tiny that there was no way that it could support the rest of the body, let alone fit all her organs in there. I've seen corsets with a bigger waist and this was naked.

I remember in The Sims 1, waking up my Sims early resulted in them throwing such extended temper tantrums that I feared the social worker was going to come take the baby away (because they took so long to deal with the crying). Kind of hilarious thinking back on it. In The Sims 2, the cuddling in bed can cause emergency wakeups to be a little annoying, but not as much as Sims1. But yeah if I don't have a burglar alarm, or I forgot to wake them up for an early job, etc. it can get a little hectic. I wish I could get rid of autonomous bedmaking entirely. Go make your cereal. Your bed will be there when you get back.

The top hack here will let you cancel bedmaking. http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/al/hacks/

I thought about getting that mod when Andrew ran upstairs to make his bed in the middle of cooking a toaster pastry. Of course it was burnt, but Andrew said that was my fault, for trying to cancel the bed-making action. He said, if I'd just left him alone to do it, he'd have had time to run back down the stairs and get the toaster pastry before it burnt. In the event I put in the Don't Walk away while Cooking mod instead.

Andrew says, "Instead of trying to stop me making my bed, you just run up the stairs and make yours, you lazy slob!"

Since he got married, Andrew's got an extra problem. He usually can't make the bed when he wakes up, because Julian is still in it.

. . . Excuse me now. Shamed by Andrew, I'm away upstairs to make my bed!

I wonder what they were thinking making this particular action non-interruptible. It's quite mundane, not supernatural or a disaster. Sometimes I might want to make only one side of a double bed too. The person who wrote it might have been involved in carrying espresso cups too.

Could be a hiccup where they hadn't implemented the appropriate strings to allow the player to cancel the action, but that's my guess. Considering how pressed for time the team were during development, it's no surprise that little things like this weren't checked.

it doesn't involve strings. The are wait-for-notify points in the script between stages of the motion where it can be stopped cleanly without leaving objects in an usual state, arm extended carrying, frozen, non-interruptible, or similar. A cancelled interaction becomes shorter. Maybe the bed action was assumed to be very short, a single bed with the person already standing next to it. It is helpful for a coffee drinker to be able to guaranteed walk away from the machine a few steps.

Ah, I had an idea that "string" wasn't the word I was looking for, but I couldn't think of any other word at the time Your explanation makes sense though, since sims can be in different places in the house before they think to make their bed. Maxis could have exclusively thought of it in the context of the sim standing close by, making it a short action.

I don't know if it's just me, but I always get frustrated with the autonomous "Read to *Child Name*," and "Ask to be Read to," interactions. They happen far to regularly and distracts the sim from doing anything beneficial for their needs, and they try to interrupt sleeping children and toddlers. I know there's a mod that stops this and I have it, but it doesn't work. My sims still so it!

Greyish elders' skin.

Problems with elders in general is that healthy, working, at most 30-something-looking Sims jump to being 77 with a broken hip after having a slice of cake.

Yeah there should really be a "middle-aged" life state between Adult and Elder, especially since Elder seems to represent advanced age.

A preteen life stage would be even better...your kiddies jump from looking five years old to looking 18 in an instant lol