More Awesome Than You!

How long should I try with one partner before deciding it's not going anywhere?  So far my sim has not had option to Confess Attraction or Ask to move in (on romance menu) for any sim, even ones she's been woohooing the socks off night after night.

It would be kinda nice to see her settle down with someone - any tips?

Well if you're hump humping, you're beyond the confess attraction part. I get the confess attraction option before the first kiss.

Be friendly until they're best friends with a full bar. Then do first kiss, then regular kiss, then you can pretty much propose.

I have never had a kiss option on my romance menu for any of her boyfriends, they can only kiss on the bed.   Is that because she has the neat trait, she thinks it's untidy to be all over the place kissing ???

You have to watch the little status box in the upper left of the screen, where it says things like "Sim A thinks Sim B is okay".  Keep tossing romantic interactions at them and you'll see the other sim's thoughts progress from flirty to very alluring to extremely irresistible.  As you work your way up the chain, you'll see that you have more and more possible interactions.  It's not like TS2 where you get them to be best friends and then a single romantic interaction results in twu wuv.

I don't think anyone has figured out if there is any concept of attraction or chemistry a la TS2, but I definitely think I've seen some sims be much more resistant to romantic advances than others.

I find it a little odd myself that you can get them to woohoo if you make them relax on the bed, but they won't even kiss through socials unless you work them all the way through the chain.  

Also, "move in" is a friendly interaction, not a romantic one.

ETA: Also, I think it was Zazazu who ran into a glitch with getting sims to progress to romantic interests.  I think she solved it by cheating their relationship up to best friends and then trying a romantic interaction.  She talks about in the original The Horror thread I think back around 20-30 page area.      

Well I only get irresistible on the bed during makeout, because of course I can't make them do more than hold hands and hug standing up, which doesn't seem to excite them enough.  And on the bed of course I don't have the other romantic options such as go steady.

The most confusing part of romantic interactions - or any interactions, for that matter - is that switching "tones" tends to reset any progress you've made for that session.  So if the other Sim sees yours as alluring, then switches to a friendly interaction, they'll likely be back to "flirty" when you switch back to romance.  I think social interactions are the weakest point of the game.  Where in TS2 you had the chain of chat/joke/flirt actions until love happened (and then could do any interaction you wanted pretty much whenever you wanted), here you have flirt/different flirt/flirt some more, regardless of relationship level.

I've found that, with an established relationship, you get to start farther along the course but I otherwise agree.  A married couple should have all the options all the time unless something negative has happened between them.

I had similar problem with a female playable.  The partner I selected for her had the "commitment issues" trait.  I finally gave up and had them move in together using the merge option in the edit town.  They lived together until old age death but never got an interaction to change to a committed relationship.


Edit:  I had moved in sims both before and after this, the option never appeared in ANY menu option.

Is there an "ask to move in" on the Romance menu? I had my Sim get engaged to Cycl0n3 and there still wasn't one popping up. I wound up finding it in the "friendly" menu after building up the interactions for awhile.

Right now my big problem is that I made a cute lesbian married couple who are polar opposites -- and one is "unflirty" (doh, why did I do that)*. And I canNOT get them to woohoo, not even when they find each other "extremely irresistable", and no matter who is initiating in the interaction. YES, that means her wife, the great kisser/family oriented/friendly Sim turned down woohoo from her, too. I guess I just have to try to build up their relationship points.

*She's also a workaholic with no sense of humor, lol.

Indeed; the 'ask to move in' option drops down in the friendly tab- however, if you are in a deep unromantic moment with another sim- despite it being in a different tab- the option to 'ask to move in' should appear in the friendly tab. Though, much as you mentioned Seana, options do not always pop up- as with you not being able to WooHoo. If you find you can not get the 'ask to move in', try queuing a bunch of friendly actions until it appears.

Seana, if you manually have both your gals 'relax' in bed, do you get the option to WooHoo?

I think your biggest error was posting a completely off-topic question in this thread.  Way to derail the entire discussion.

Anyway, as per the original topic, this might be kind of obvious, but make sure that the sim you are romanticizing is not already in a relationship with someone.  Even if you have made out and woohooed with them, they won't commit to you if they are already with someone else.  It can also be an issue with traits.  Sims with Commitment Issues will happily do all of the romantic actions EXCEPT going steady and becoming engaged/married.

In my tests so far, not only do traits matter for romance but mood/social does also. If your sims are in a terrible mood some options won't appear, if their partner is in a terrible mood, you ask them to woohoo they will refuse. My sim tried to make out with his girlfriend in a bad mood, was shoved and then she left. An option to apologize came up next time he saw her.  It's kind of amusing the romantic struggles, my sim would not go with the girl I wanted him to, annoyed I then left him alone to check on his twin brother on the other side of town, and when I zoomed back to the house he had started flirting/kissing with his brother's girlfriend on his own accord! I guess she could not tell the difference? lol

The titles at the top of the conversation meter are really good to let you know how you're doing. Romantic interest + good mood (going to the bistro together gives a really good mood), chat, ask how was day, hug, kiss from there usually brings me with all the option to woohoo, ask to move in, to advance the relationship. But most of my sims have flirty trait so I will have to try a non-committing sim now.

Oh yes, mood definitely matters.  Try throwing a party at a scenic places.  If you throw a party on a nice community lot, you get a moodlet for the lot AND a moodlet for the party.

Of course, sims get very nice moodlets for first love and first kiss, so if you can manage to be your partner's first, you have a better shot at getting them to commit.  =)

Being in a beautifully decorated room (just collect gems) and playing music in the background (leave the stereo on) can give around +70 mood easily too, I never had a woohoo rejected with that combo.

Yeah, it does come up, but everytime either one of them proposes it the other rejects it. I think it is the Unflirty trait -- it's not that it's impossible, but that there has to be an extremely high relationship between them for them to get it on. I'll keep working on it...

Sorry if this seems like stating the obvious, don't mean to insult your intelligence, but maybe she has the unflirty trait perhaps? This happened to me. Took me ages to realise why I had a problem with my frigid baitch! :)

In the Sims 3, foreplay is a must.  My playable fell for Hunter Cottoneye in Riverview, that is one of the most problematic sims to get in a relationship with, without me knowing all of his traits. During the 3 or 4 sims days of Hunter calling and accepting to go out places with her, I found out that he was mean-spirited, neurotic, an angler, a loner (hard to get him to visit). Their romance started with the normal menu, then when the first kiss option came up, I took it. The kiss was successful and all the other steps became successful, til the option to propose marriage popped up and I tried that. Hunter rejected and my sim was heartbroken, but that was when she found out the last trait, the pop-up said he was insane.

After finding out, I thought the playable would leave that situation alone, but she still wanted him for romance. After being rejected 4 times, Hunter finally caved in and accepted the proposal and eventually moved in. I think it's just a long process in foreplay and wooing. My final thoughts, we sure could use a TS3 ACR mod for this.

I would freaking love ACR for the Sims 3. Because you know what? Despite all of the ~crazy~ stuff that goes on thanks to Story anProgression, I haven't really seen any/many townies hooking up with each other. In my first game I was kind of hoping Agnes Crumplebottom would find somebody, but it looks like she stayed alone (and pretty miserable, last time I spotted her in that save). As far as I can tell, Mortimer, Bella, and Kaylynn don't seem to have any romantic interest in each other. I've seen married couples get pregnant, but that's it.

Oh, don't worry; my selfsim spent a couple of days playing the catch-them-all game with the gems, and when she returned to the sim she was hitting on, I found out that in the meantime he has become Agnes Crumplebottom's boyfriend.  :P

MOAR FIGHT!

You do not have to have the Sims relaxing on a bed to get the WooHoo menu item.  Once selected, they will go to the bedroom.  I only wish that the male Sim would pick her up and carry her to the bed.  It would be more romantic (but probably only for the first few times).  Once one of my Sims, after selecting WooHoo, headed for the bathroom (guess she really had to pee) and I thought that the action would drop from their queues.  To my surprise, once she was finished, the male Sim went to her and hugged and kissed and then they headed for the bedroom.  I just love what they have done with this aspect of the game.

My absent-mineded Sim once forgot that he was supposed to be going to the bedroom to woo-hoo with wife, and stood there with a question mark over his head, making a sound something like, "Durrr....."  His wife, already on the bed, hollered to him to get over there, which snapped him back into the present; it was great!

@Inge:  The game seems to have embraced the concept of casual sex.  One can woo-hoo and try for baby without having a romantic interest in the other Sim.  In order to get the full range of options, one has to engage in both friendly (get to know) and romantic interactions over a period of time.  Each time together is almost like starting over, except from a higher point in the relationship.  Also, both Sims need to have their need bars pretty full or they won't get in the mood. 

After Cornelia Goth died, husband Gunther was heartbroken.  While still in mourning, he met sister-in-law Agnes Crumplebottom on a community lot and cried on her shoulder.  They'd developed a good friendship over the course of Sim years.  Suddenly Gunther got the want to kiss Agnes.  One thing led to another, and they were married the next day.  I think this is a good indicator of how important the length of the friendship is.  I've never seen romance proceed so quickly for any other Sim couple.

They could have done a lot better with the romantic animations.  Compare TS2's couch makeout to TS3's.  It doesn't even look like they are ENJOYING it in TS3.  And I really miss the marriage proposal animation where the proposee would get all excited and JUMP into the other one's arms.  In TS3 its like they are reluctant to touch each other...

I've had meet-to-marry in less than 24 hours, but this was with two sims who shared three traits, had no incompatibles, no other romantic relationships, and the active sim was at level 5 or 6 of charisma, and had the charismatic trait.

Once I've gotten used to how the trees work, romantic relationships aren't hard. What annoys me is that it looks like they tried to make them more complicated, but in the end only succeeded in making them extremely formulaic.

@MasterDinadan:  I agree.  I miss the movies for first kiss and woohoo, as well, from Sims 2.  But with Sims 3 my Sims take off with the romancing all by themselves once I start them.  And once they finished they are not finished.  They cannot seem to get enough of each other.  I love that.  This is what I had hoped TwoJeff's ACR would do, but it never worked that way.  I just wish that the Sims now would actually initiate it on their own (just not constantly at each other all day every day as with the ACR).  I would like to get surprised with an unexpected pregnancy, one that I did not have to initiate.

Also, is it just me, or do the Sims move around as if they have a stick up their butt?  Sims 2 Sims had fluid motions and seemed more human.  Sims 3, for me, is like a love-hate relationship.  I love it and hate it at the same time.  Makes no sense.

I had my older Sim roll a Have a Child Wish while the house was full of his 6 kids and his wife was too old for more babies anyway.  So I gave him a mid-life crisis and had him chase down some 20-something, woo her, and impregnate her.  From "meet" to "bear my child" was about 6-7 hours. He ended up with 2 kids with her.

Romance is too easy in this game, compared to the delays forced by the long-term relationship meter in TS2.  However, I do appreciate that a single flirt doesn't turn a friendship into instant love.

Two things bug me about the game.  The Sims rarely roll romance-related Wishes, even if they have the Hopeless Romantic trait.  "Have a Child," yes, but no "flirt with that attractive Sim" and only rarely "kiss so-and-so" or "woohoo so-and-so."  I've never, ever seen "marry" or "get engaged."

The other is the way non-playables spontaneously generate children without anyone else.  Having the kids with the townie allowed me to look at their family tree, and their half-brother did not have a father.  Similarly, I got sick of looking for a romantic interest for one of my Sims, so I created a neighbor guy for her.  They did OK, but then she discovers on the second date that he's got a newborn.

Awesomemod fixes this, but I get the impression it's still very much in early beta.  I'm not willing to trade annoyances for crashes at this point.

 - Gus

Something that I found helpful when I had a sim that would be best friends with a guy but couldn't get any real romance going was to drag down their relationship to acquaintance or friend and start the romantic interactions over. 

The key thing to look for is "Confess Attraction" under the romance menu.  My method is to have them flirt/hit on their desired mate and when the "confess Attraction" option comes up I add it to the queue.  I usually have about 5/6 interactions in a queue at a time so when the CA option comes up I just add it in.  After CA is chosen I go to the "First Kiss" and "Make out" options.

Apparently, I don't have the sex thing down either.

I have decided that tomorrow I go and buy a Prima guide. I have not ever had to do that... But the poor guy got slapped... they were making out and everything, I waited days! They did the woo hoo once... so I figured since they weren't exactly virgins, she would woohoo with him again. WRONG! She slapped him and stomped off. The game said she was in a bad mood - all her bars were green...okay, maybe she was a little tired, it was close to bed time...that is when normal people... oh wait. I just figured it out. I said it. er typed it. Normal people...

Is there a sims3 appropriate time of day for woohoo and/or trying for a baby?

Oy vey. I have given up for tonight...this game is no fun. Aren't games supposed to be fun?

Another romance difficulty that may be gone is that in TS2 (and TS1, for that matter,) Sim #1 might be wild about Sim #2, while Sim #2 just wasn't that into Sim #1.  Unrequited love and all that.  I haven't checked it by switching households just to be sure, but, I have awesomemod in, so testingcheats is on. I've found that I can have two sims meet for the first time, slide the relationship bar all the way to the right, and the two sims are immediately best friends.  A few flirts, a confess attraction, a kiss, and some proposals, and they're married. This wouldn't work if feelings weren't automatically mutual.  It's made it easy to marry off a few random sims who I thought could make decent looking kids together, and I guess I like that--I keep doing it--but it's one more thing that takes away from any depth that might have existed in this game.   :-\

I've found some sims are ALWAYS in a pissy mood for some reason.  One of the sims that had this problem i put in the active household with debug mode and all bars were green and they didn't have any negative moodlets.  I ended up giving up on one of sims i selected to be my sims spouse.  It was near impossible to do anything romantic and any try of woohoo (i swear that word woohoo sounds so weird when you say it) always ended up in the sim getting annoyed.

It helps a bit to overmax the romantic option i've found before attempting woohoo.  From what i've been able to tell its more like a hidden bar than a simple three step option thing.  Just because you get the highest romantic options does not mean you've maxed out the hidden bar.  Once the woohoo option becomes available have your sim do 3 or 4 extra romantic actions to build it up higher to prevent it from failing.  The same can be said when attempting a first kiss or making out as well.  Always try to build up the romantic bar a bit further before trying the new options that just got unlocked.

There are definite modifiers to that friendship bar and actions. Mood, what they're thinking ("friendly", "flirty", "irresistable"), other relationships (if they have another boyfriend, they have to like your sim more to have any chance of cheating unless other modifiers apply), Traits... and probably one or two more I haven't noticed.

Mood and other relationships seem to be the biggest causes of the "Eww, no!" reaction, but Traits are definitely factoring in as well. It's entirely possible that a Snob sim is going to be a pain to romance for a poor sim. Other situations may be coming up that the game isn't giving good feedback about.

But, frankly, the social part of the game being so ridiculously easy is my only real complaint with the game, so I wouldn't want it any simpler. Once you add Charisma and a couple perks, any troll sim can take any new acquaintance from meeting to impregnated in a couple sim-hours, regardless of that sims' personality or previous relationship. Further, the "living town" never takes note that "Big Humpy" down the street has fathered half the town's children with twenty different women. No child support, no public scorn... no, the ladies just keep stepping up to be served.

It's difficult to feel like you're running around in an open world, when that world doesn't notice you're there. You can't even get them to erect (ahem) a statue of you. There's no way to leave a lasting impression in the Sim world other than by raising a clone. Sim life is even more futile and meaningless than real life!

Actually, I kind of played my last neighborhood that way on purpose - it got a little hard by the time one of the founding fathers went to his grave a very contented old man having fathered 26 children by something like 20 mothers (there were twins).

I've always played for the genetic and more 'Peyton Place' aspects of the game...I read some interview with an employee at EA working on the project when in development and he said they were moving 'futher up 'Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs'... I thought "wow! someone took psychology 101 at the local community college"... and wouldn't it be nice if sims in sims3 weren't fixated on peeing and showering...guess I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up so much, huh?

Edited to add - I got off on that tangent and didn't finish my thought - I think it would be very cool if in this game there were repurcussions like you are saying...that would be very interesting for me and would make me WANT to play instead of wanting to forget I ever bought this thing.

Oh and I think I might have figured it out - she's got the lucky trait - he has the unlucky trait - he got 'unlucky'...

I couldn't figure out why I'd only ever seen the "Propose Going Steady" interaction once.  After reading this thread I went into my game, used only Romantic socials on two of my sims and finally solidified their relationship.  They each thought the other was "extremely irresistible" and then I tested the status by doing one friendly interaction and their opinion of each other plummeted to "okay".  What a shitty mechanic.

Also, it would have been nice if, when I selected "WooHoo", the two of them had gone at it on the kitchen counter right next to where they were standing instead of dragging their asses up to bed for more boring, barking sex under the covers.  What's so wrong with counter sex?

I actually had a sim or two roll up the wish to propose to their girlfriend/boyfriend. Woohoo as well, but only with a sim that was already at least a steady relationship. Also didn't ever see a wish to initiate something more romantic (e.g. flirt with an attractive iacquaintance.

Yes, counter sex would be awesome. Same as couch sex, floor sex, and shower sex, but I think in order to sell the game to minors they had to censor the sex aspect by imposing what sex should be. Lame, in a bed, under blankets, with rose petals ???, and making weird and unsexy noises at each other. If you had some sims humping on the loveseat, censorship would be kind of difficult, IMO.

Sims games have never had animations (not original to the game anyway) beyond bed woohoo and hot tub woohoo.  Other woohoos have all been 'out of sight' in booths etc.  It was extremely unlikely that EA was going to change this policy for a game that is not primarily ABOUT woohoo.

Additionally, rose petals, fireworks, and honk honk noises are clearly the epitome of romantic sights and sounds to the sims themselves.  Honestly if you want quasi-realistic noises, watch pron.

Bunch of pervy n00bs.

And yet, I recently had my eyes opened at what is beyond the threshold in the US Every Mall staple shop called "Spencers" - a teen hangout around here...they know more about sex than I do. I'm pretty sure of it. So the only people EA is deluding are the parental units.

I know our fearless leader doesn't like to be thanked profusely, but once again, I can't believe I dragged my heels at installing it...it is truly awesome. If only all things in life were as advertised as 'awesomemod' is... If I can only have one, it's this one.

Truthfully, I don't care - they could blur the whole act out and it could be silent or flowery or whathaveyou...I don't play to get my jollies watching pixels mate.