May 17, 2014

Using the dream pod to your sim’s advantage

The Into The Future expansion pack adds a bunch of content that will make sims’ lives easier in the sim present.  One of my favorites is the dream pod.  It’s the same size and has the same functionality as all of the other two-person beds in the game, but it adds a few interactions as well.  You can exercise a little more control over a sim’s dreams with the “Influence dream…” interaction, which could lead to consequences after your sim wakes.

in-the-dream-pod

With each selection, the sim will have either a bunch of smiley faces (for a positive influence) or a bunch of frowney faces (for negative) appear around her dream bubble to tell you what kind of result your influence has had on the dream.  After enough influence is built up in either direction, the sim’s Zs will change color from white for a neutral dream to either green for positive or red for negative.  If you send your sim to dream, you should always influence the dream to your desired outcome because when a sim wakes from a dream pod dream, the sim will almost always have something changed, either a trait change or some other effect, based on the dream; check the resulting dream pod moodlet for more information on what effect your sim has gained.

One thing that I’ve noticed with this interaction, however, is that the upper and right-most selections in this menu will (almost) always have a positive influence on the dream while the lower and left-most selections will have a negative influence.  I’ve only had one instance where this wasn’t the case.  In this screenshot, my sim is dreaming about close relationships, so the romantic rocket ship ride and the bacon ferris wheel will both have positive influence, while selling the car for cotton candy or washing the darks with the lights will both have negative influence.  There is also a very limited set of influence interaction descriptions for every dream type, with only about 6 different texts in total (and they always show up in the same position on the selection menu).  For me this takes away a lot of the fun of the influence and turns it into just a routine to create the dream outcome I want.  In my games, I don’t even read the selections on this menu any more and just manipulate the dream as desired.

The dream influence routines could have been improved just by adding a randomizer into the menu selection to at least make me read which selections are where in the menu.

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