If it did I would have had an incentive to actually graduate. Instead many studies require further - privately financed - education if you are hoping to get into paid employment one day in the future.

I think that's why I don't understand why they introduced it into the game. If influence was working on a more global level and maybe related to the status (career, money, friends) of a sim rather than particular wants and fears, it would make more sense to me. The OFB business rewards (relationship bonus not influence) serve this function to some extent, or shorter if you have enough influence other sims should be more likely to lick your arse.
With influence points connecting to wants, it is either the wrong wants which carry them (Earning 100000 simoleons does not add any influence points, hustling pools adds 500, as much as making a friend) or they should in fact be less global. Having a baby gives a massive 5000 influence points (tell that to a single mother on social welfare), which is only comprehensible if you see it as giving the mother a big influence over her offspring.

The way the influence is implemented (on a low daily task level) it is a bit too much Stepford wives for me. I do have fond feelings for my sims and they are impaired since I neither like the one, who is coercing the other into doing something, nor the victim which transforms into a brainwashed zombie so easily.   

That is an interesting idea and would definitely be more useful than the current influence meter, although I can not find a "psychological" explanation - manic/depressive? endorphine overdose? - why it should go fully into the red. The influence meter would also be drained over time, so if no wants are fulfilled the sim eventually will not be able to draw from past good experiences anymore. It makes sense to me.

So far I hardly ever used the influence, my students often get the want to write a term paper (and I just realised that I may think it's wrong to hand in other people's work - scroungers), with social interactions it usually seems to go horribly wrong (if it works at all, because usually it drops from the menu when the influenced sim can not approach the third one immediately) and it takes ages to complete the influence interaction.
Nina Caliente's husband influenced her to clean the house one time and that was quite funny, given her general character and the way she moved around like a robot when she was "under the influence". I got fed up with it before she was finished cleaning the house though.

Dialogs? Are you tallking about internal dialogs, stuff I don't get to see as a player? The adjuster has an elaborate pie menu (which could possibly be simplified a little) and I have the option of many settings to control the behaviour of my sims, but they are easy to understand and it's up to me to use them since ACR is working fine with the default settings. Personally, I think that it has become even better since more options were added (for example to make settings static/dynamic separately) but there is only a handful of sims were I feel the need to make adjustments.
Apart from that I agree with witch and would even go so far as saying that it compares to an expansion pack for what it is adding to the game. It is definitely much more than a WOOHOO!-hack and I am not saying that it isn't complex. That's why it is so good since complexity doesn't automatically translate into overladden and complicated.
Of course there is a certain chance that your opinion is based on personal animosities, but since we are not on the child's board I guess I can trust that this is not the case.

Oh, and why are flamingos so frequently mentioned here? What role do they play?

Actually, the game does not want to allow them the full fun, although there is no reason for it. Dustin was in love with his girlfriend first (both still teens), then Brandi decided - way before ACR but still all by herself - she wanted the father (Father and teenage daughter were CAS-created and lived across the road). I did not want to create any problems for the teenagers and waited until they became students before Brandi and her lover moved together. So far everything was fine.
I think the change occured when Brandi got married, but I only noticed it later. The students were going to woohoo for the first time and I got them a love tub for some preliminary romance only to find out that they couldn't get in together.
It occured to me then that I had not seen any of the "Oh my god, he/she is so wonderful"- heart thoughts, that were so common for them, in a while. When I investigated I noticed: 1. No romantic interactions in the hot tub were possible, 2. No romantic pictures in the photobooth and obviously no public woohoo option, 3. All expressions of attraction were gone, and - worst of all - when I tried "scope room" they only shrugged! That was really bad, because if I ever had a perfect couple it's them.
When I got them engaged the heart thoughts and the scope room interaction returned and I always wanted to check if the other options are available since they got married. They are too busy making and bringing up more Brokes though, so I did not have the chance for it yet and since I got ACR the missing options are not such a big issue anymore.
But I would still like to know what tests are run and what stopped them using these objects.

Anyway, I think those difficulties made the Broke family only dearer to me and even if it happened by accident I like their special family situation. It is the reason why I like the family reunion memories too, because they are always big events (Brandi has 7 children), it's something I'd imagine them to think back to. They don't fulfil any wants or serve in any other way, but is this important? Some details simply add to the characters and the story.

You definitely don't need 10 family members, because I had reunion memories with less.
I am also not so sure about the three generations, at least you don't need grandparents. Three different age groups could be right though. One memory dates from a graduation party, with the parents, students and younger teenage siblings.
It's the Brokes, they get reunion memories every time they have a birthday party. They don't get them when only Dustin and his wife (who is the daughter of Brandi's husband) come over for a visit.

I think the major flaw with the idea is that most others don't share your opinion that ACR is too complex. There are many settings to modify the behaviour of particular sims, but if you feel that it is too complicated you can just stick it in and see what happens. The complexity of the hack accounts for the diversity of reactions, which I still find amazing (For example: Melody Tinker could still not bring herself to do teen woohoo after making a booty call to her boyfriend, with my current generation of teenagers thinking very different about this issue).
I could be wrong, but my guess is that you read the description for ACR but haven't tried it out yet.

Apart from that, the original attraction system that is in the game already allows for romantic interactions below a certain relationship level, if the attraction between two sims is high enough.

The only difference I can see would be the introduction of "temporary" attraction as a result of romantic interaction, meaning that one sim might hop into bed with another on one particular night, but not the next day when the magic has passed. I quite like that idea. ACR does not have such a feature, the timer goes down steadily unless they get to woohoo, although it usually works like that.

I haven't tried arranging souvenirs yet, but 5 seashells make bladder decay faster? Why would I want that? Is it permanent?

Obviously, or it would not have crashed my game. The thing is, I don't keep the exclusive rights on my mistakes, they remain free for others to make.

(Jolrei: I believe that they contain some garbage too, but maybe it was simply not renaming them - as somebody suggested - that caused it.)

I do not understand what should be the difference between deleting them in CAS or Bodyshop. Both delete the files from the download folder - a rather simple action.

I had this problem recently and in my case it was due to some character files that I had extracted with SimPE/Sim Surgery and put into my downloads folder.

Apart from being generally rather useless the robots broke almost immediately when my sims tried them (regardless of badges or mechanical knowledge), so it does not really make a big difference if they are already broken when they are sold. I am sorry to have to tell you, but you are not selling a quality product in the first place.

The jack-in-the-box with the devil inside is sorted as a different category and will only be used to restock others of the same kind.

I don't really see pets downtown much anymore, but it did not bother me that they were around.
The most simple solution to stop them from destroying furniture (because that is annoying) is to place a scratching post and a chew toy in some corner outside. Scold the strays a few times in case they still go for the furniture and the problem is gone.
If you use Insimenator you can also raise the motives for scratch and chew and that works rather well too.
But as I said, they don't show up much (or at all?) anymore, especially not in clubs where they always looked a bit out of place.

They don't, so you don't need a hack for that. If it was different my sims parents would have lots and lots of these memories, because I play my sims slowly and their children are bringing back an A+ every day.

I feel a strong need to mention that: I think Sim Surgery is shit.

I am not denying that some of it might be due to my own stupidity, but that is a problem with SimPE in general: It makes it very easy to make mistakes. It is very user unfriendly (at least from the perspective of someone who has a fair amount of understanding but is far from being a professional) already because of its weird wording (and it makes absolutely no difference whether I install it in English or German. What is the difference of the "commit" option to the "save" option at the end of a session? When I press "commit" I am effectively saving the changes I have made).
If I export a sim with sim surgery I have absolutely no idea what I am exporting exactly. It is not a simple body shop character but what else goes with it? All I know is that the exports crash bodyshop if I keep them in the "Saved Sims" folder (which SimPE suggests for export) for some time. In my case I was stupid enough to move them into my downloads folder when that began to happen.
I had almost forgotten about this, so it took me almost an entire week to find these files to be the reason why I had these inexplicable crashes in one of my neighbourhoods (or all the other neighbourhods apart from the one where these files were exported from).

Maybe I also lack diligence, but I am still looking for the tutorial that tells me that a lot of crap is exported with the character files and that they should be deleted immediately after making clean copies of the characters in body shop.

Is it the Prima Guide saying that only one sim can befriend Bigfoot when they go to a lot together, or did you mean that only one of them get the memento even if both of them become friends with him?
However, I just checked and it isn't true in my case. Could it depend on who is having a map?
I had two students, who both got the map as a reward for a successful tour, they went to his lot together and stayed there for a long time (I put their motives up either with the cheat or with Insimenator, but did not cheat to bring up the relationship). Both of them became friends with Bigfoot and both have the memento.

So, no I have not noticed this problem.

Apart from that I believe that Bigfoot belongs into the wilderness. When I read for the first time that you were able to move him in I immediately realised that I would never make use of this feature. He does not even seem such a sociable creature that you get the impression that he is lonely out there. I would like it much better if you could move in the ghost pirate.

They might not have proper family relationships, but set their gender preferences and let ACR do the rest, they seem to find out who they belong to very soon(unless they do not appear together on the lots for any length of time). I changed the personality/aspiration for some but most of them I kept the way they were and now they are flirting, kissing and woohooing all over the place. I use Insimenator to set the teenagers as children of them (so that they don't woohoo what I consider their offspring).
It's the same with the locals, there are certain "preset" potential couples too. 

That was extremely helpful. I was really annoyed that there were these empty plots along the beach on Twikki island where you could place ordinary lots but no beach lots, because I wanted some families to own beach lot holiday homes. I had already started to think about creating another location, but I wanted the Twikki locals. After removing the waves I could place three beach lots along that one road. I am very happy.

The old NVIDIA driver 7.7.7.2 (build June 2005) works for me and many other people. No more blue screens or endless loading and it shows all the graphical effects that some other people report as missing. It is an old driver but it is doing its job just fine.

It does not work with 7xxx NVIDEA cards but you got a 6600 GT (like me), so you could try this (if you find it, I don't know whether it is still available).

Some of the characters they seem to like so much that they were probably reprocessed several times. Doing some more research about the dead characters I looked at them with SimEnhancer. Skip Broke 1 must have been created a long time ago, because he still has a limited set of interests ("scary things", "outside") like some of the very early ancestors of the original families. Skip Broke 2 was apparently done much later. When I loaded Strangetown afterwards I looked at the thumbnails flicking before me and suddenly noticed a student looking exactly like Skip. Same face, same thumbnail, same personality.

Unfortunately, after looking at the characters my arrogance, stupidity or a sudden attack of neatness (maybe a combination of all) compelled me to delete the last remains of the already deleted Ottomas family (without doing a back-up first). When I entered the game the next time and tried to create a family in Strangetown it crashed. Using the usual combination of logic and magical thinking when dealing with my computer (it does not sound like a valid method but works in most cases) I discovered that it does not crash when I go into CAS in Pleasantville first. I did a bit of file maintenance removing some CC, restored the Ottomas garbage, deleted it again, none of it helps. CAS (and changing appearance in the mirror) crashes Strangetown. It does not crash with the workaround through Pleasantview CAS.
I am not sure if it is related to the deletion of the Ottomas trash. I have not created a family in Strangetown since the installation of BV. I do not really believe in the "never delete a family from the bin", because - well I do that all the time. I create replacement families, use them to replace townies and other uglies and delete them afterwards. Custom content could be responsible (although I would expect all neighbourhoods to crash then) and I do not see a relation between the families and changing appearance in a mirror. But this is were magical thinking comes in: The Ottomas family are a curse, introduced by evil game programmers trying to cause problems to innocent sims players, and I feel strongly that they are the problem.
Usually when I delete the character remains of my deleted families with SimEnhancer, the next new characters use the 'holes' and take the number and place of the deleted character. Some newly created replacement tourists did take the Ottomas numbers, but half of the slots remained empty. The teen boy and the grandmother seemed particularly faulty after copying them back and forth a few times and their numbers are unclaimed. The child girl is the only one who ever came in contact with the world outside the bin and her number was also not taken.
I will try again this evening (still too many ugly sims on vacation) to see if the slots will be used this time, but does anybody have any suggestion what could be the cause for this crashing problem?

Usually, when you check in the hotel, the rooms are locked for the other guests. I accidently clicked and unlocked a hotel room before though and then the room quickly filled (and it was hard to get rid of the intruders even after locking the door again).

Since the hotel rooms have to be unlocked if you want ACR actions with another hotel guests (or between other - unplayable - hotel guests), I removed all the TVs and hope that it will stop them entering the rooms. TVs in the rooms are stupid anyway and there are other good reasons to remove them (lower prices, no disturbance when my sims want to sleep). Actually, hardly any of my sims own a tv because it is such a useless object.

I was wondering about the same thing and out of curiousity searched the BBS last night. I was going to find out how many people actually reported crashes or problems after a resurrection. Anyway, I came across this post which I found quite interesting with regard to the dead/disappeared sims in the original game:

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?&openItemID=&threadID=6cef6227684386de9de7f93776ed2e4a&directoryID=2&startRow=1#3c5c73450c427b18a820e8232dc772f9

It still doesn't tell you what will happen if you resurrect/bring back a bad character file, I did not follow the links. I tried different variations around the words "crash" and "resurrect" (all categories/all dates), but could not find any messages.
 

I read that some changes were made with one of the expansions (OFB?), but I don't think that this is true for all the dead characters. The ones who have gravestones are safe I believe.  I resurrected Darleen Dreamer a long time ago and never had any problems. However, at that time there were two character files for Darleen (as well as for Bella or Skip Broke), which is what might have changed by now.

At the moment you haven't got any problems, you only fear that you will have problems in the future, is this right?

I would suggest regular backups. It is a very large number of character files, but I don't thinik that there is a limit where the game invariably blows up. Trying to solve problems before they come up does not sound like a good idea.

I think that it is a pity that it is not possible to move sims to another neighbourhood (maybe even the entire population) -  I played with the same sims (and their offspring) for about two years now and also worry that the neighbourhood will become overcrowded eventually - but I decided for myself that I carry on playing and see what happens. I make backups. I am safe.

Actually, it does not happen so often. My tourists travel from one location to the other (as I am taking my sims to them) and on the first day at a new location they sometimes try the gesture from the previous one (which they haven't learned properly). After some shrugs and confusion from other sims they most likely try the appropriate gesture for the location. They are still making fools out of themselves, but at least they are acting culturally correct.
With the combination of antivacationsactions and the antiprank hack they act quite sensibly most of the time with the exception of being a bit too obsessed with Tai-Chi.

I have Pescado's antivacation hack in my game, but it does not stop tourist from trying the wrong gestures in different holiday locations, i. e. they bow on Twikkii island, chest pound in Takemizu village etc.
My impression is that it is only (or mainly) the tourists, who haven't learned these gestures yet (and therefore can not teach them to others). The hack seems to effectively stop the dances and the sea shanties though. So, I have a number of tourists looking foolish trying some local gestures they have not learned and that is okay with me. Other sims look at them, shrug and shake their heads. It makes sense.
Tai-Chi (even if only performed in Takemizu village) is getting a bit much. First none of the locals did Tai-Chi, but once it starts everyone does it all the time. It would be alright if they did not want to do it EVERYWHERE, blocking stairs and the access to rooms or objects.
Generally I believe that it has become a Maxis/EA tradition to add some good ideas/objects and then advertise them so much to the sims that they become a nuisance. Pillow fights, water balloon fights, children dancing on toes, musical instruments and the bubble blower (the last one I regret the most, because I have not found a hack yet that reduces the advertising of the bubble blower. Otherwise all my sims would have a water pipe in the house). Fine tuning is not their strength.