More Awesome Than You!

Normally when new expansion packs are released, I make a new neighborhood to try out the new options. In Freetime I am unable to find/use the "Scope" option. I had updated my hacks but still thought that might be the issue. But nope, no hacks and still no "scope". After that, I removed all my downloads incase some CC was doing the problem but still nothing.

So did Freetime bork the scope interaction or is it strictly a case of tight pants for me. Was hoping others could check their game.

May be tight pants.  Scope room interaction is available in my game.

Keep in mind, your sim has to have something to scope FOR.  If they have no history of romantic relationships, they will not be able to scope.  Have your sim "flirt / check sim out" with another sim of whatever gender you want them to go after.  Once this is done, "scope room" should be back in your menu.

Thank you. I hadn't used flirt because I wanted to see who they might be interested in first.

They won't be interested in anyone unless they have flirted at least once.

ACR lets you set gender preference, and then you can use Scope.

Using the "Check Out" action will set a preference without flirting with anyone.

Yes, but that could cause unwanted 'flirt' wants with inappropriate sims.

Well, first, if you're randomly checking people out, you already *DO* want flirt wants with some random sims. Second, scoping the room already does this, since it fires "check out" on every single sim in the room already. The norandomflirtwant component of wfsanity will already suppress inappropriately-appearing flirt wants, although for anything to be inappropriate, you'd have to have already had a preference to begin with, since it's a bit hard to be already in a relationship otherwise!

Yeah, I think you can tell that I never use the 'Scope' feature. I use TJ's Crystal Ball to find 'the one' sim and ACR pretty much takes care of the rest.

[eta] I used the 'check out' and 'scope' features when I first had NL and I didn't like the effects, so it isn't like I've never used it. Just wanted to clarify.

The Scope thing is pretty much meaningless, since I'm pretty sure most of us don't pair sims together based on that. It's similarly meaningless for romance sims looking for prey, since again, I'm sure the selection criteria you use is nowhere close to that.

Emma, what usually happens when you 'Scope Room' is, once SimEmma looks around at the available prey and declares that "Goopy is HOT!", you'll then have an insta-Want-roll that'll then turn up Wants to flirt and/or ask out Goopy and, say, TransGoopy (it'll often throw in the 2nd hottest - according to your sim's own twisted criteria of hawt-ness, of course), along with corresponding Fears of being rejected by the Goops.

What puzzles me is why scope doesn't always fix on the sim your sim has the most bolts for.  Yesterday for example, my sim checked out SimX and got "Y is hot", but when I looked at her relationship panel, she had 0 bolts for SimY and 2 for simZ.  I seem to remember a crossed out bolt coming up as "hot" as well a while back.   What's going on?

This is because bolts are bilateral chemistry, but scope displays only unilateral attraction, which has only a loose, and possibly no, correlation.

Um. I do know that, I'm not an idiot. :P


It depends on the other sim. If the attraction is bad (say, he hates blonde hair but likes glasses and fatness, and your sim is fit with blonde hair and no face furniture) then it lowers the attraction score. Then, there is personailty and aspiration thrown in. Plus, sims are dumb. That's why it is good to choose for your sim rather than letting them choose for themselves.

My apologies, I didn't read your comments closely enough and thought you weren't that familiar with scope. Naturally, I should know better than to think you weren't already well versed in the scoping of Goopy's hotness. Clearly my bad (^_-)

Plus, sims are dumb. That's why it is good to choose for your sim rather than letting them choose for themselves. -Emma

Ugh, amen to that. I've had more than one loser sim get the heart-farts for fricking Tiffany Zarubin from the garden club. Spluh!

I do occasionally allow sims to mate with someone they scope, provided that I can live with the match.  It's not the main driving criterion however.  After all, if one just blindly followed the scope results, Emma would almost always end up with Pescado.  It has been emphasized to me so very often that this clearly must be avoided.

Scope is evil. Daphne was destined for the probe, as a knowledge sim. When she became an adult, she suddenly wanted her first kiss. Fine. Harmless. I let her go to Dance! and do a scope and she picks out this nasty-looking dormie. Fine. Just using him for a smooch. Now she wants to marry him.

Ummm... So scope looks at both sims (personality/aspiration/turn-on/offs) and picks out the best fit whereas bolts are one sided.  Your sim can have bolts for someone who hates them.  OK got it.  It's the next bit...  I was labouring under the illusion that bolts and scope both took account of personality and aspiration - am I wrong? 

I think you've got that the wrong way around.  It's scope that is one-sided.  Scope shows who the scoping sim thinks is hot, but carries no guarantee that the other sim will think the scoping sim is hot.  That's why sim Y will scope and get a message that sim Z is hot, even if sim Z is turned off by sim Y or isn't into sim Y's gender.  The bolt system is a measure the mutual attraction score between the two sims - i.e. how sim Y feels about sim Z combined with how sim Z feels about sim Y.

Well that shows I was right to ask for clarification!  ;D  I didn't get NL when it came out and got a truncated version of it when I bought OFB.  I still pretty much ignore attraction unless I am dealing with frigid sims.  Scope is useful for a wants re-roll though.

I was originally told that both sims had the same number of bolts for each other, but I don't see that in game when I look at a married couple for example.  I thought I remembered somebody awesome telling me bolts weren't a mutual average..  Or is that just lag - I'm pretty sure Pes said that recalculating attraction was laggy.