The Sims 2/Wants and Fears

The Sims 2 expands upon sims by giving them wants and fears. Wants and fears give your sims goals and things they would rather avoid. This article explains how the mechanics of wants and fears work.

Wants and Fears Panel
The wants and fears panel shows four wants and three fears. Sims desire to experience wants and would rather avoid fears. It should be noted that wants and fears don't impact sim autonomy. A sim may have a want to eat cereal but that doesn't mean he or she will do it themselves. Apart from the visible wants, there are thousands of possible wants in The Sims 2. The ones shown are the most important at the current time. Most wants are self-explanatory but if you're unsure on how to fulfil it, simply left-click it for an explanation.

Want and Fear Changing
Over the course of a sim's life. They go through several wants and fears. When wants and fears are chosen, they won't stay there forever. If you don't fulfil that want within a time, sims will just forget about it and think of new wants. This however doesn't mean that the want won't show up again. It just means that you can't rely on them forever.

At times the wants and fears panel will refresh. Sometimes one slot will refresh, sometimes two, sometimes three and sometimes the whole panel is refreshed. Wants and Fears change under theses conditions.
 * Want is fulfilled.
 * Want is made unachievable, impossible or unimportant. (e.g. Sim has wants to get into two separate careers; when one of these wants is fulfilled, then both slots will change).
 * Sim wakes up from long sleep. (Short naps don't change wants.)
 * Going to a community lot and coming home. (At community lots, the wants often correspond to the activities available there.)
 * Changes in household state. (Losing family members, growing up, giving birth and adoption.)
 * Three times a day. (Only food-related wants change. Sims won't want to eat lunchmeat sandwiches during dinner.)

Locking Wants and Fears
If you really want to fulfil a want, you can lock that want forever. It will then stay in the panel until you unlock it or until it's fulfilled. To lock a want, or fear, just right-click it.

Choosing Wants and Fears
There are several elements that influence wants and fears but these are the main ones.

Aspiration
Aspirations give your sims main goals to achieve over a lifetime. At most times, at least one of your sims wants will be related to your sims aspiration. So don't be surprised if your family sim wants to get married but your romance sims starts to fear it. Aspirations are the main source of where your sims wants and fears come from.

Also, the lower your aspiration score, the more influence your aspiration will have and the more outlandish the wants will be. Low scoring family sims want marriage right away while low scoring knowledge sims want to maximise lots of skills.

Age
Some wants are limited by age groups. Teen romance sims won't want to WooHoo simply because it's impossible for them. Likewise, elder sims of any aspiration may gain the want to retire because it's accessible to them. Note that how full the meter is also depends on age. You'll notice that every want has a score. The maximum score depends on age like so. When sims grow up the aspiration may appear to change. However only the scale changes, you don't lose any points.
 * Toddler (maximum 3000)
 * Child (maximum 6000)
 * Teen (maximum 9000)
 * Adult (maximum 12000)
 * Elder (maximum 15000)

Personality
There are a group of 'universal' wants and fears that are not dictated by aspiration but by personality. Neat sims will fear seeing roaches and using public toilets while outgoing sims want parties.

Recent Wants
Most often, these wants are dictated by aspiration but it helps to know that wants follow 'want paths' of sorts. In these situations, some wants act as 'pre-requisite' wants that must be fulfilled in order to show higher scoring wants. The most obvious of these is in skill related wants. For example a knowledge sim wants to gain logic level one. When that want is fulfilled, it is replaced by the want to gain logic level two. This continues until the want to maximise the whole skill and reach level ten.

Benefits of Fulfilling Wants
This section explains why you would want to fulfil wants.

Platinum Aspiration
Platinum aspiration gives your sims a healthy full mood that can not be lowered by any need. Mood for the duration of being platinum will count as 100 for situations like work and social interactions. In the case of work, you're guaranteed a promotion if you have the right skills and friends. Platinum aspiration doesn't last though. In eight hours it decays back to gold. The decay however goes slower, the lower it gets. After that, only fears can make aspiration score hit rock bottom.
 * Gold (takes 16 hours to decay)
 * Green (Takes 64 hours to decay to red)
 * Red (Takes 32 hours to hit bottom)

Inheritance
When sims die, inheritance depends not on the amount of money but actually on aspiration. These people will all get money when a sim dies: How much money depends on two things. Aspiration score at the time of death and relationship. The highest amount of inheritance a sim can receive is $20000 and that's if lifetime is 100 and aspiration is platinum at the time.
 * Spouse
 * Children
 * Grandchildren
 * Friends

Desperation and Immaturity
If you still don't want to achieve wants then perhaps avoiding the state of desperation is motivation. Desperation wastes time. The amount of desperation will reflect in autonomous behaviours. When aspiration is at 0, sims will start to behave immaturely: this includes annoying other sims, jumping on the couch and swinging on the fridge door. Further down the track, sims break dollhouses, wreck paintings, start to have tantrums, kick down sculptures and trashcans, and at the bottom sims will pick out fights and kids will have tantrums. At the extreme bottom, desperation reflects your sim's core wants.

Finally, in red aspiration, when sims grow up, it counts as growing up badly and sims will start to fear growing up.