How do you pick your sims' traits?

I do randomize any childrens traitss though, and let what they roll influence their story.

My answer is for my initial sims in a story or save. Children from the initial sims will have one trait that I consider a family trait that they inherit, they will inherit one trait from the parents. The remaining traits will be randomized based on personality, future goals, LTW etc.

I do whatever I feel like doing at the time. Sometimes I choose traits that will help them with whatever my plans are for them. Sometimes I choose traits that neither help nor hinder them. Sometimes I randomize them. With one sim born in my game recently, I decided that I wanted to play her with a very long lifespan and have her spend most of her time painting, so I can hopefully see all of the paintings sims can paint. But I want to see them all in the unmodified state, so I made sure she had no traits that could cause trait overlays on paintings.

My sims are all "machines" it seems. They go to work/school...and make sure that their homework is done ON time. After all...their founder is a "High Expectations Asian Father". :D :mrgreen:

YOU NO STUDY; I NO FEED YOU.

"IreneSwift;c-16763512" wrote:
I do whatever I feel like doing at the time. Sometimes I choose traits that will help them with whatever my plans are for them. Sometimes I choose traits that neither help nor hinder them. Sometimes I randomize them. With one sim born in my game recently, I decided that I wanted to play her with a very long lifespan and have her spend most of her time painting, so I can hopefully see all of the paintings sims can paint. But I want to see them all in the unmodified state, so I made sure she had no traits that could cause trait overlays on paintings.

This is more like how I choose traits too. It's never the same just depends on how I feel or what I want to accomplish.

This artist sim sound interesting. What traits that influence painting style did you avoid?

In the past I have done a variety of things. In order to learn which traits give better buffs toward goals, I often used the well oiled machine approach. Depending on the game and goals -- used other methods, for example different challenges require certain traits.

Nowadays, I tend to use NRAAS quite a bit to look at Status > Personal of NPCs including ghosts generated by the black dragon, the ghost gnome, and to look at the personalities of NPCs and inactives. Some of the combinations of traits that I've seen are so amusing, may have LTW I've never played, and seem challenging to play. So I've begun adding such sims which didn't die of old age (bringing them back to life if they are ghosts) to my much more vanilla families through which I rotate. And a bit later move those former NPC sims to their own households so they are in my rotation.

I play high free will -- so situations that develop tend to generate ideas for story flow. So I'm really enjoying this 'other' approach.
True, I end up with sims with odd fashion tastes, peculiar genetics, and exaggerated facial traits. I change very few bits of whatever they arrived with (some ghosts do not have winter clothing, so I change that). I might recolorize their clothing bits, eyes and hair and if it's WA sims such as with an Irish (or similar out of place) surname for that culture, I give them a new name and be sure they have the correct culture assigned to them. I had a Chinese ghost with a roman nose and a surname of McRae, for example -- changed all that and gave her asian culture.

Additionally I have a sort of pet rescue program for ghost pets. If while managing the dead, I find ghost pets, I add them to a family I'm playing and when the ghost appears if it is a red ghost (in pets means they had little satisfaction in their previous life), I bring them to life and give them a better life so they die after their second life with a blue ghost. All blue pet ghosts are returned to the mausoleum.

I usually choose traits that will help the Sims later in life, like skill traits, ambitious, and family oriented if they’re stay-at-home-parents. Once I have a few traits, I try to get a theme going. For example, I’ll make a virtuoso toddler an artistic child.

-Other
My priority is always making money but careers only make-up 3 traits, the other two is determined by the expansion. For example University students need Genius to study Business but not the actual Business Career. So I select 2 traits that I need for my career and 2 for relationships and 1 for study and the last career trait I get for graduating

"cwaddell;c-16763579" wrote:

"IreneSwift;c-16763512" wrote:
I do whatever I feel like doing at the time. Sometimes I choose traits that will help them with whatever my plans are for them. Sometimes I choose traits that neither help nor hinder them. Sometimes I randomize them. With one sim born in my game recently, I decided that I wanted to play her with a very long lifespan and have her spend most of her time painting, so I can hopefully see all of the paintings sims can paint. But I want to see them all in the unmodified state, so I made sure she had no traits that could cause trait overlays on paintings.

This is more like how I choose traits too. It's never the same just depends on how I feel or what I want to accomplish.

This artist sim sound interesting. What traits that influence painting style did you avoid?

artistic, can't stand art, genius, grumpy, evil, virtuoso, computer whiz, insane, and neurotic

I used almost always picked the traits based on what kind of life I wanted them to have. Lately I have just randomized and rolling with it because I felt like I was using lot of the same traits and wanted to mix it up. So far only exception to this is I was having fun getting my sim abducted by aliens.