More Awesome Than You!

First of all, I'm a new member here but I've been a fan of MATY for a long time. Longtime listener, first-time caller, as people always seem to say on talk radio.

Anyway, I've been thinking that sim relationships are a bit too idyllic. You match them up, get them to fall in love, maybe get married, and then....nothing. Their relationship scores hardly ever change, unless you force them to argue or make one of them cheat. Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against long-term commitment...I'd just like it to be a little more difficult to keep some sims together. Even mean sims stop being autonomously mean (mostly) once they get to a high relationship score with another sim, romantically or platonically. This just doesn't make sense. I mean, even the best relationship has problems sometimes, and it shouldn't always have to be related to fidelity.

That's why I think it would be great to have more autonomous "mean" behavior, like arguing, teasing, annoying, etc. The fewer "nice points" a sim has, the more frequent their mean behavior. With romantic relationships, attraction could also be a factor, so that two sims who are not so attracted to each other would be more likely to argue with each other also. It would make relationships a lot more challenging and diverse. Two extremely mean sims would be nearly impossible to keep together, while two extremely nice sims would never argue with each other. Sabotaging relationships through infidelity is fun for awhile, but the reality is that most couples split up because they just don't get along for some reason.
I'm not really sure how feasible something like this would be, but I thought I would throw it out there as a suggestion.

I wouldn't mind some more spice to the relationships, but I wouldn't want every mean character to be a bastard to their spouse. That would get just as predictable as the normal relationships are. I had a mean sim who doted on his wife and I adored that. He was constantly serenading her. It explained why someone as sweet as she was would be with a money hungry bastard like him.

I think that's where attraction would come into play, since attraction is partly based on personality compatibility. If a mean sim is compatible with his wife, he'll be nicer to her than he normally would with other people.

Maybe you should try twojeffs's ACR. It's not what you are looking for but it has brought lots of relationship instability in my game.

Actually this would be a pretty interesting feature if  the arguing did not necessarily lead to a destroyed relationship. I have two not-very-nice Sims (a 1 and a 3). The first day they met they started arguing and hollering at each other... but they had 3 bolts right away and when I had the man tell her goodbye he grabbed her and kissed her.

It was pretty funny. But now they are married and although they seem to be very happy together I miss their fights. And I think they miss them too. They should be able to fight and have fun with it and then run off to woohoo somewhere.

So, autonomous arguing and fighting with fun and minimal relationship loss^* for sims with low nice and medium or higher playfulness would be a fun toy to have in my game too.

 ::)


^*I don't want to have to rebuild their relationship from scratch every time they get feisty.

Right, it should only do a little bit of damage to their relationship scores - one argument shouldn't make them hate each other. It wouldn't destroy a relationship unless you let it go unchecked, in which case their relationship would just get progressively worse. But of course, that would only happen if you let it.

Heh...I'd love it if they'd even gripe and argue about whose turn it was to do dishes or clean the toilet, instead of everyone jumping up to wash one bloody plate at the same sink...even those with only two or three points in neat. And that, even more than the nice-mean scale, strikes me as a good start point for petty, or at least not seriously destructive, bickering. Active-lazy is also good ("C'mon! Let's go DO something!" "I AM doing something...I'm taking a nap...or trying to...") with relationship hits that are about on par with the constantly backfiring "dirty joke" interaction. But the closest I've seen to that type of spontaneous negative dialogue is the "flush while someone's in the shower" lecture.

Something like the puddle rage, except done right? :P I've had the fix in, but I've recently had a neat kid be furious with an elder he just met, and the only thing I can think of that caused it was her staying too long at the chessboard and wetting herself. Yet I could swear I had those fixes in, argh. So, yeah. The current state of that sort of thing is obviously not good enough...

Oh, yes! How about "puddle rage" but over the remote...(*click* "Listen, bitch, I was WATCHING that show! Why'd you turn it off?") Escalate from there. Perhaps if the relationship has been allowed to deteriorate far enough, they might even wind up in a real donnybrook.

Didn't that creepy doll face guy at MTS2 make a PMS hack?  Did he get around to adding random infuriations to it?

Someone posted a list of random stuff to spice up your Sims' lives.  You could add "have an argument" to the list and just start an argument when that comes up.

Isn't that the "nag" menu option?

Yeah, but I want it to happen autonomously.

Ooo, I like this idea. ACR has been a great deal of fun for me but having them fight autonomously would add even more. I think I have a tendency to micromanage too much...probably because they don't do anything otherwise! Anything that would give the Sims real personalities would help the game.

I like this idea also! 

if it's possible to do then I think twojeffs would be the best one to do it, if he is interested.

I realize this thread is growing moss, but I too would like to see something in this vein created...so, to that end, I thought I'd give this topic a nudge.

Crossing my fingers that someone more awesome than myself has this on their "to do" list.