Sims fun meters/bars stay at halfway?

[kamikazehigh]

So, for some reason, my sims' (any and all of them, be it a new neighborhood, previous saves, moving/evicting/etc.. with and without awesomemod) fun bars migrate to halfway and then stay there.  Like, they can do fun things and it'll go up, but then back down to half, or they can mop and get it below half, but then it migrates up.

I've posted about this on the wonderful forums EA has provided, but I'm going out on a limb in hoping maybe someone here knows how to fix this?  My game's fully patched (in fact this is probably because of a patch problem).  I have LN, AMB AND WA.

I've been using Awesomemod since before the problem started, and moving all mods out of my sims folder didn't make the problem stop.  You can read mine and other threads people have posted with this problem if you want: http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/631924.page

I'm just looking for a way to fix this even if that means through modding.  I'm pretty rusty with modding since making objects in sims1 with codex and iff pencil, but I'm hoping maybe someone has knowledge of how moods and motives work for the game.

[Madame Mim]

So, for some reason, my sims' (any and all of them, be it a new neighborhood, previous saves, moving/evicting/etc.. with and without awesomemod) fun bars migrate to halfway and then stay there.  Like, they can do fun things and it'll go up, but then back down to half, or they can mop and get it below half, but then it migrates up.

I don't like mopping either.

I've posted about this on the wonderful forums EA has provided, but I'm going out on a limb in hoping maybe someone here knows how to fix this?

If you think EA's forums are wonderful I don't think you're going to be able to understand any answers that you might receive here.

I'm just looking for a way to fix this even if that means through modding. 

Jeeze, you're generous, you'll even try modding hey?

[jezzer]

My game's fully patched (in fact this is probably because of a patch problem).

If your game is fully patched, it's not a patching problem, because no one else is having it.

[dragoness]

Uh.

I thought that was just standard behavior for that motive. It's always been that way in my game. It defaults to somewhere around 'meh', but you can push it up into the fun levels with moodlets and/or drag it down with stressful things.

Does it normally decay into stress without actually doing a boring/stressful action?

[witch]

My sims' fun bars work the same way as any of their other bars, they can watch TV or play games or whatever until their bars are full, then the bars slowly decay until they do something fun again. Or the bars keep decaying if sims are doing something Not Fun.

[kamikazehigh]

So they can starve to death but have their fun be "meh."  Why doesn't that surprise me?

I found in simpe that, instead of VariableDecayByMoodlet or FixedDecay, fun's motive decay is DecayToZero.  I don't know if I'll be playing anymore until I fix this.

Thanks for the replies.

[EDIT]
Well that was easy to fix.  Now I have mine where it continues to drop below halfway until -100.

I get the theory behind it, since now negative fun means "stress" and not "boredom", but it's just too different from sims1 and sims2 for me.

Thanks again.

[jezzer]

My sims' fun bars work the same way as any of their other bars, they can watch TV or play games or whatever until their bars are full, then the bars slowly decay until they do something fun again. Or the bars keep decaying if sims are doing something Not Fun.

Same here.  There was a period where the Fun motive was borked by EA -- when Ambitions came out, I believe -- and it was almost impossible to get the Fun motive out of the yellow/red zone.  There was a temporary fix mod for this until EA finally addressed it in a patch.  Other than that period, "Fun" has always worked like any other motive:  you fill it when it gets low, and it gradually decays on its own or more quickly decays when your Sim is doing something it doesn't enjoy.

[kamikazehigh]

My sims' fun bars work the same way as any of their other bars, they can watch TV or play games or whatever until their bars are full, then the bars slowly decay until they do something fun again. Or the bars keep decaying if sims are doing something Not Fun.

Same here.  There was a period where the Fun motive was borked by EA -- when Ambitions came out, I believe -- and it was almost impossible to get the Fun motive out of the yellow/red zone.  There was a temporary fix mod for this until EA finally addressed it in a patch.  Other than that period, "Fun" has always worked like any other motive:  you fill it when it gets low, and it gradually decays on its own or more quickly decays when your Sim is doing something it doesn't enjoy.

What do you mean?  If you trapped your sim in a dark room with no exit, your sim's fun would eventually fall past halfway?  Cause mine would not.  The motive was set to migrate up to half if it was below (+1 per hour), or migrate down to half if it was above (-7 per hour) until I changed the game files.

I didn't see the -7 or +1 in the motives.xml like you see 14.5 for bladder, but it was "DecayToZero" instead of "VariableDecayByMoodlet", so I fixed it and set the moodlet decays, so now if my sims are trapped with nothing to do their fun will eventually fall to -100 like any other motive.

[Skadi]

That is because the fun motive works differently to other motives. When it falls below halfway you get debuff moodlets [stressed] and when you stop the action that was causing it to drop, the sim will become "unstressed" and it will return to the halfway mark.

The mopping example. You hate mopping, so you lose fun and become stressed out while doing it. The very act of ceasing helps to relax you and make you feel better - but only so far. This is the midpoint of the fun bar.

If you didn't want it to increase back to the halfway mark, you would have to deal with the debuff moodlets another way, or you would end up with a town full of stressed out townies.

[kamikazehigh]

If you didn't want it to increase back to the halfway mark, you would have to deal with the debuff moodlets another way, or you would end up with a town full of stressed out townies.

Omg that sounds awesome!  I now have zero regrets about modding fun in my game!