I posted in hacks you want to see saying I'd like one, and then a recent upload by Nopke there was a phrasing that made me wonder if maybe this mod already exists. I didn't think it did, but then again I don't keep up with every corner of the Sims 2 community so maybe I missed it. Has anyone seen a mod that prevents enthusiasm gain from hobby-linked activities?

I've been using a mod that does this called "Anti-Enthusiasm Global" by xptl297. You can find it here (it's in the 'TypicalFTMods' folder).

Cool! And your Sims are still able to have enthusiasm through things like boolprop and it stays put where it is? The readme makes it sound more like a total annihilation of the hobby system, which I don't want, I'd just like enthusiasm to stay at whatever I put it at.

If I'm remembering correctly, the way the mod works is it automatically pushes down hobby enthusiasm so it never reaches high enough to the point where you'd be notified that it was gained.

But I just tested it out and set my Sim's enthusiasm level in Film and Fitness to 50 through SimPE and had them watch a movie/work out for multiple hours. I checked their enthusiasm again and both went down to 40. Maybe there's some sort of timed decrease that's applied?

In any case, this doesn't appear to be suitable for what you're describing.

EDIT: I just tried xptl297's mod out with Sunrader's "No Hobby Decay" mod found here as described above and enthusiasm stayed at 50.

I guess Sunrader's partly cancels out xptl297's by not allowing it to decrease enthusiasm, but xptl297's mod still works to prevent enthusiasm gain, giving the "frozen" effect you want. It doesn't appear they conflict from what I saw in the files, and I didn't notice any issues during gameplay, or anything weird in SimPE when I checked the enthusiasm levels.

Maybe you could try these out together and see if it works for you? I'd make a backup just in case something goes wrong.

Aw, that's so sweet of you to test it out just cause I asked. Way to go above and beyond Thank you so much. I tested the xptl297 mod earlier today just to see if hobby interactions still works, and it seems all of them do except blog/web browse about which I never use anyway so don't care. Didn't occur to me to test if decay would happen, so I'm glad you thought about that. I think it should run fine with the mod I already use to prevent decay (forget who it's from, had it so long) as there's no conflicts reported in HCDU, and from what I remember looking at the no enthusiasm gain mod it only has the type of code that HCDU covers. Gonna make a backup and test it out in practice in my main game next time I play, fingers crossed it works.

Thank you so much for bringing the xptl297-mod to my attention, and sharing a link to it, and for being such a total sweetheart in answering my follow-up question :lovestruc

This made my day! You're very welcome.