And then...buy a sim a drink

I love the Simslice beer, I hadn't noticed it always choosing the oldest, my main issue is that the advertising (?) to it is so strong that everybody flocks towards it instantly so they all grab a drink and drink it at the same time. Then when they choose an interaction to do, 90% of them fail because the recipient is in an interaction (sitting drinking beer). They also insist on throwing the bottle away when they have drunk it, so trek halfway across the lot to find a bin! Just put them down! It's fun when it works, but it requires a lot of micromanagement to try and make sure some of the interactions work. I usually try to distract everyone before they get vacuum-drawn to it so that they all drink at staggered times.

It should only be the same attractiveness as the Maxis juice keg. (Or attractive if the sim is bored, uncomfortable or lonely) And the interaction should be shorter and no push to tidy up unless they are very neat. Who tidies up at a party anyway?

I think some of these items could definitely be improved. Even if the existing code was just cleaned up and made a bit random.

Some positive interactions could be:

Random boost to some mood (hunger, energy, hygiene, comfort, fun - or should it always boost comfort and fun?) If it could boost hygiene without clearing a stinky flag that would be even better.
Boost to social only if sim is alone (otherwise, the chance of social interactions cover this)
Aspiration boost which might even tip them into platinum - very short lived
Boost in attraction to this sim
Attraction boost the other way around - your sim has a boost in their attraction towards all other sims. This is another one I think could even be "always")
(Unsure if this is possible) temporary/simulated boost to charisma/creativity skill - if not possible, gain some charisma/creativity points (as in points towards a full point)
Chance ro push to interact with a performance object (instrument, microphone, podium, freestyle)
Push to do various social interactions - hang out, kicky bag, red hands, dirty joke, bust a move, friendly hug, brag, admire.
Play with bathtub, slide down staircase, play on fridge, juggle, do pool table trick
Walk off lot and come back with random items - pizza, road sign, gnome, another sim (teen and older with BF relationship or total stranger? Chance of crumplebottom? Brought back by police, triggering the "This party is too loud!"?)

Then the risky interactions: the flirts/kiss/hug and yes engagement should stay, because it's hilarious when they try to jump in arms and fail :D
Puke and bladder drop make sense
Change into underwear, naked, streak
Jump into pool
Loss of logic/body points
Push to cook a random meal regardless of skill, maybe with the increased chance to walk away like the absent-minded trait.
Negative social interactions - shove, slap, throw drink, fight, insult etc.
Use random electrical item with chance to break.
Give money to another sim
(Very rare) chance of death - hunger animation, green/sickness ghost. Since most drinking happens socially, shouldn't be too hazardous as low chance and there are likely to be plenty of sims present with a high relationship score to plead with the grim reaper.
Random chance of increase in interest in paranormal, sci-fi, entertainment.
Loss of enthusiasm in random hobby
Make current temperature more extreme - if cold make colder, if hot make hotter, increasing chance of freezing/heatstroke.
Make any current illness worse (sims should avoid if ill, hot, cold)

Pregnant sims also shouldn't be able to drink autonomously.

These could all possibly even all be tunable so that people can turn off what they don't want.
Romance interactions should have a minimum level of attraction or be based on attraction but not relationship. Maybe ignore sexuality?
Mean interactions could be disabled for very Nice sims

By the way, I don't suppose it's possible, but has anybody made a mod that increases the size of the "buy clothes" screen? I am sick of squinting trying to see the miniscule previews, and "try on" takes a long time. I'm sure I could either just buy a lot of outfits and then try them on in the choose outfit screen, or cheat to give them the time back, but it would be nice if it could just be bigger to start out with.

1) Everything is more expensive - a hack that makes everything 10 times more expensive. I have no idea if that's possible at all, but theoretically it should be: you'd only have to make sure that the game adds a zero to all prices, including custom. Or maybe it's not possible.

2) Realistic bills and lot prices, realistic service people wages - also around 10 times more.

Years ago, one reason I dropped TS2 was because my sims had everything they could ever dream of. I had no feeling of accomplishing anything of note in the game anymore.

There are a bunch of bigger bills/bigger service prices, for lot prices you could probably use something like the mortgage shrub and just change the price to something crazily high and pepper those around the place.

To buy other stuff, it's not easy to make it globally expensive, but one idea is to set up an integrated neighbourhood, where everything has to be unlocked one by one (there are various rule sets, or you could make up your own which makes sense to you) - only being able to buy from sim-owned shops means that you can only buy things once someone's business has become well-enough established to access it (and there you can set everything to expensive?) Or playing a whole-hood apocalypse challenge is great fun because it gives you the sense of the community being rebuilt over time.

I like Cyjon's biggerbills because it's customisable:

http://cyjon.net/node/134

I didn't make housing more expensive, but I did make apartments cheaper. There is a mod for that somewhere.

I found this for the service sims although they are higher in my game so I must have a different one:

https://modthesims.info/d/587659/fa...rvice-npcs.html

I think I have expensivenpcs from MATY: https://modthesims.info/t/422548

There are some other "hard mode" suggestions here

https://www.reddit.com/r/sims2/comm...ease_the_games/
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=600220

And Lamare's new LTWs are fun for a new challenge/refreshing flavour, that might push you to try things you haven't done in the game before.

This also sounds fun, haven't tried it out yet.

https://modthesims.info/showthread....360#post5421360

With a combination of bigger bills, no $20K handout, and mortgage shrubs (which deduct a daily interest payment on the loan), your Sims will rarely get rich, especially if you don't let them inherit property from their parents. You can mod out life insurance too, although I like that.

One thing I've seen people do with service Sims--although this is not something I do--is make them playables. You teleport them over when they are needed, have them do the job, and then you can pay them whatever you think is fair using Monique's hacked computer. You can also set up a system to pay taxes to a "mayor" the same way, or just use the donate function to pay your taxes into the air.

As far as I know you can put any price on cloth your sims make on sewing machine. Not sure if there is such mod.

As for the bill mods, you can find here and on tumblr bill mods.

Other people have already recommended that you try mods like higher wage for NPCs, and bigger bills, but I will also recommend this mod I use that halves the salaries for the game's careers: https://modthesims.info/download.php?t=304457
Which I find would be a more elegant way of making sims struggle for money than inflating the prices of objects, because I'm pretty sure that would have to be done for every single object in game, individually!

Another thing you can do to reduce the riches is to implement some kind of tax system. You have to create it yourself and track it on a spreadsheet outside of the game, rather than it being an automatic mod thing, but I make my households pay taxes at the end of each round and then that money goes into a "treasury" and, if I want to build a new community lot in town, the money has to come out of the treasury. I also like how that puts limits on me adding comm lots and makes the growth of the hood feel more natural.

Hey, maybe there's a mod idea. What if there was an automatic taxes mod? I think most people do a weekly charge, so, perhaps it could be based on the code for the landlord collecting rent from apartments...? Sure, you can do taxes yourself outside of game pretty easily but wouldn't it be fun if the game kept track.

Thank you, girls, I didn't know that a customizable Bigger Bills mod existed! I'm definitely putting it into my game.

The way I used to try to solve the problem was installing a mod called ATM machine, which can deduct funds. So, if my sim bought an easel for 300 simoleons, I'd deduct 3000. It was not a great solution, because a sim has to actually go to the ATM to do that after buying every single thing. And still they all got crazy rich within one generation.

I had various taxes, too, like a tyrant. You couldn't even have a kid without paying 10.000 for a kid license . Private school costed the same, entering the university costed 40.000. I taxed sims for having a car, although I can't remember the details. It was still not enough of a money sink for my sims, and the second generation, their kids, could afford anything.

I also used slow skilling, harder jobs, harder school, no20k handouts, no inheritance, empty fridge, and I'm sure there was more I cannot remember. It was not enough to keep them from going rich eventually. But maybe bigger bills will help a bit more.

You may want to use Monique's HACKED COMPUTER because it has (among many options) option to DONATE (in reallity GET RID OF) money.

It sounds like every now and then you need to have a "natural disaster" in your neighborhood or a stock market crash that just wipes everyone out. Maybe roll for random disasters every season or something. Or institute a culture where the kids don't get anything from the parents and have to start over from scratch. A lot of my Sims have to start out on their own with a mortgage and they don't tend to get rich unless they get a lucky chance card, but many of them will choose not to have a job or will skip work a lot or won't skill so they don't get promoted. Only my most ambitious Sims make it to the highest levels of their jobs. I also have several custom careers with low-paying jobs like bartender because I figure a lot of Sims, like a lot of people, get stuck in low-wage service jobs.

Anyway, that bigger bills mod will help get rid of money. It has different levels you can set it to, and if you set it to the highest level, your bills will be huge, and they'll come every day but Sunday. Also definitely get Monique's hacked computer-- I could not play without that thing. One thing you can do with it is turn on private school fees, and in addition to the entrance fee you already pay, it will deduct a tuition for each child every school day.

I just use the college tuition mod to sink money, it works great for that.

I'd love a mod that replaces the witch/warlock language with something more open-ended like "spellcaster" (since that's the activity it mostly refers to anyway), and maybe "magic skill" language changed as well.

I've been setting up my occult gameplay and I don't mind witches/warlocks at all - but I don't like being limited to that conception.

I imagine spellcasting, psychic abilities (cause headache, assess mood/past), alchemy/potion/poison making, other supernatural abilities (bending, causing lightning, etc), and even transfiguration (vamps becoming bats, fairies becoming light, werewolves turning) as related, but SEPARATE, things.

Potion-making/alchemy, transfiguration, etc. are all a lot more versatile thanks to mods from midge, meduza, whoward and others. I'd really love to see the in-game language updated to reflect that.