New Blog with Lyndsay Pearson

[Cassie]

Greetings , Simmers! You may remember me from The Sims 2 Expansion chats and posts. I now work on The Sims 3, and today I'm going to tell you all about Wishes and Lifetime Happiness in The Sims 3.



Wishes are a new system in The Sims 3 that provides you with a wide selection of requests that keep your Sims happy as well as working towards some neat short- and long-term goals and rewards. You can choose to promise to help your Sims with a wish or you can throw it away.  Satisfying a promised wish gives your Sim Lifetime Happiness Points and a feeling of fulfillment! What good are those you might ask? You'll be able to use these Lifetime Happiness points to buy Achievement Traits for your Sims, and fulfillment keeps their mood up! The Achievement Traits are sort of like the traits Ben told you about before, but they’re extra advantages you can purchase and unlock. They range from time saving (Steel Bladder: who doesn't like the idea of never having to pee?), economically wise (Haggler: all your shopping is cheaper), or even more extreme traits (Mid-Life Crisis: change what were permanent traits into better, worse, or just different ones for a change of pace!). There are more than 20 Achievement Traits to pick from!



Now that’s the quick overview of progression. Here’s my Wish gameplay style!

When I play with wishes, I look at them as the things my Sim thinks about doing or thinks about working towards that I'm helping her to achieve. Wishes are little (or large) goals that my Sim encounters as she goes about her day. She may wake up and wish to “make waffles” because her favorite food is waffles. Later, when she's at work, she might wish to “get promoted” or “improve a skill”. After work she can visit the park and get a wish to “meet somebody” since she’s friendly or “go to the art gallery” because she’s artistic. All throughout the day she will get these wishes and I decide if I want to help her to achieve those things or if I want her to pursue something else. It’s a fun system to play with. If I’m busy, I can choose a smaller wish to work on and feel like I helped her out. If I’m in for a long, marathon Simming session, I’ll focus on helping her become a “Master Chef”—something more time consuming, but ultimately more rewarding.



We’ve looked back on our experience with Wants from The Sims 2, and think that you’ll find the Wish gameplay feels really different and better than Wants. You’re now free to pick or ignore your Sims’ wishes without fear of some sort of mental breakdown. Instead you really get to focus on telling the story and making decisions; your Sim just makes suggestions along the way. If you promise that you’ll help your Sim get married, then decide to throw that wish away, your Sim will be a little sad (who wouldn’t be!) but otherwise it’s really all up to you.



Wishes come from anywhere and everywhere, based on your Sims’ traits, her job, her skills, her friends or coworkers, where she is in town, or what she might be doing. It makes the wishes feel very dynamic and interesting. Long-term wishes really give you something to strive for and focus on, a goal and purpose for your Sim. I think you’ll really enjoy seeing the wishes you will come across by playing a Shy, Artistic Sim or an Evil, Insane, Genius Sim. It’s a different experience every time!



Thanks for reading and happy Simming!



- Lyndsay

You can also read it on the official site here.

I haven't read it yet, going to do it now...