More Awesome Than You!

My current impression of it is that Chemistry is crap.  >:(  It doesn't make relationships easier or harder.  I just fulfilled a "Be Friends With" Want between two of my sims who had one bolt of chemistry.  He didn't achieve "friend" status until 90 DR.  90!  Most Sims reach Friendship at 50 DR, though occasionally some require more.  Prior to Nightlife, if it took 60 or 70 DR to maintain friendhship with a Sim, I generally didn't pursue it - clearly these Sims didn't get along for some reason.  Now I'm supposed to believe they have chemistry?

Earlier, I fulfilled a "Be Friends With" want between Sims who had negative chemistry, and it was no more difficult than normal.

By extension, the turn-ons / turn-offs are meaningless.  It's fairly clear that a turn-on adds one Bolt of chemistry in addition to any from personality / aspiration matches, and a turn-off subtracts one.

I suppose the Chemistry may only be intended to affect Romantic interactions, i.e. Flirt and Kiss, but I haven't seen any difference there.  In any case you only really need those to set the Crush and Love flags.  Ordinary non-Romantic interactions make up the bulk of your relationship changes.

 - Gus

I may very well be wrong, but I thought friendship was *always* achieved when both sims hit 50 STR. If it takes until the sim you're controlling hits 60/70/90, it's because either there have been interactions positive for Sim 1 but negative for Sim 2 (like a lot of the mean ones can do), Sim 1 has unknowingly done something in the past to piss off Sim 2 (like woohoo his wife, say), or some interactions give more points for Sim 1 than Sim 2 (like I know "chat" can give 2 or 5 points...perhaps all along it's been giving Sim 1 5 points and Sim 2 only 2 points). ANYWAY, the point is if it takes until a higher STR, I thought that was always just because the other sim's STR started off much lower for whatever reason.

Also, chemistry affects how soon in a relationship a number of interactions (not just romantic ones--I think this includes "bust a move", "dirty joke", etc) become available. If you see a lightning bolt next to the interaction on the pie menu, it means (I think) that that interaction is only available now because of their chemistry. I'm sure someone will make or has made a chart of when what interactions are available with what chemistry--or that it's horribly mutated in the prima guide.

Also, I'm going to hijack this a little bit with a question. Is "no lightning bolt" a rating in itself? That is, if you have a sim check out another sim and no lightning bolt appears, is this because something is broken, or just because they are indifferent to each other?

I'm not sure the number of lightning bolts is that simple...I redid all my couples' turn-ons to reflect their partner's actual attributes, and some still only have one or two bolts. I can't decide if I like this because it adds a little randomness (not every couple is perfectly suited for each other, even if all turn-ons and -offs are right) or if I don't like it because maybe something isn't working right.

Related question, does the number of lightning bolts get updated constantly or is it set and left? I guess it'd have to change, since things like stinkiness are (hopefully) not permanent states?

Jen

The lightning bolt indicates that the interaction is opened up because of chemistry/attraction.  Otherwise, it would not normally show.  If it shows up w/o the lightning bolt, then you got it all by yourself, w/o the help of chemistry/attraction.

I've had Sims develop chemistry late in a relationship.  I have no idea why this happens.  They start with no lightning bolts and eventually build up to one or two.

I generally ignore compatibility and chemistry issues.  I've had no problems making friends with Sims who had negative chemistry, the lightning bolt with an X through it.  

I always watch carefully to see at what point in the daily relationship the friends icon appears.  If my Sim has a 65 relationship when the icon appears, then I know I'll need to get the relationship to at least 115 before the other Sim will have 100 daily with my Sim.  Just keep doing relationship building interactions after your Sim has 100 daily with the other Sim, enough to get another 15 points in this case.  

Appreciate adds 5 points, a good conversation adds up to 15 but you never know if the other Sim is getting the full 5 points.  Gossip adds around 7 or 8.  Joke adds 3.  Bust a move adds around 7 points plus 2 lifetime.  If you have Bust a Move available, you can do Appreciate/Bust a Move/Gossip for 20 points, repeat as necessary.  Four cycles of this will get a 100 daily relationship with a new Sim brought home from work (they should have Bust a Move available since their lifetime relationship starts at 15) at which point you can send the other Sim home. :)

Hook

So that is what the pie-menu lightning bolts mean!  I had no idea.  Seems like a minor effect, particularly since the significant issue for most Romantic interactions isn't "can I initiate this?" but rather "will this be accepted?"  Kiss and Woohoo being the definitive examples.  Perhaps Chemistry affects the requirements for that as well?  I think we're all aware that Kiss acceptance requires Best Friend status, and Woo-hoo requires mutual Love.

 - Gus

There are other factors like personality fit, aspiration fit, and history.  To test it properly you should note the number of bolts prior to changing the turn-ons and then after.  Also be sure you've "checked each other out" first, because it appears that Chemistry symbols don't automatically show up in the relationship window.  Sometimes they do show up on their own, but I get the impression you need to "check out" to ensure they're there.

I could be wrong, of course.  Players frequently read stuff into games that isn't there.

It definitely changes.  I've noticed that going on a Dream Date with a Sim adds at least one bolt.

 - Gus

I enjoy the chemistry that they have added to the game.  When you have 2 sims whose chemistry matches (2 or 3 bolts), they are fun to play because their attraction for each other is so realistic.  I've mentioned this in another post that I have a family-oriented couple I have been playing (each with 3 bolts) and when left to free will, they will not leave each other alone.  The game makes you believe that they are crazy for each other.  BTW - I did not use the Matchmaker.  I created the female Sim and took her downtown and she was attracted to the male sim (who, at the time, was a townie) so I befriended them and it went from there.

Yes, you are correct.  So the lightning bolt is a warning to let the user know "try at your own risk, it may be rejected" but it may be a shortcut.

Just reading the players guide about these lightning bolts and it says on the top of page 3, "You'll know your Sim has good chemistry with another Sim when lightning bolts appear by them in your Sim's relationship panel."

The lightning bolts show in 2 places. the relationship panel and in the interaction piemenu's.

The relationship panel is the current chemistry.  The current chemistry affects the piemenu by opening up interactions that would not be opened based on the current relationship standing. 

The interactions that are opened up because of chemistry have the lightning bolt on them to separate them from the interactions that actually are based on DR and LR. 

If you do an interaction that has lightning bolts, know that you have a higher chance of rejection than the interactions that do NOT have the lightning bolts.

I like the chemistry system, too. Now my sims can get all hot and bothered by their non-romance partners. Before, it was too predictable knowing that every romance sim will have the others swooning. Now you don't know who'll swoon over whom! Sometimes it's surprising. Yesterday, the sister of Giles' girlfriend (poor Giles is my sleeping avatar) suddenly got all swoony over Giles. Giles is a family sim! I love this aspect. I also think it's hilarious when sims will gag at each other if they have negative chemistry. At first I didn't know what was going on. My sims were on a casual outing at "The Hub" and doing the smustle, and Joe would keep stopping to gag at his son Justin's wife. I checked to make sure she didn't stink, or anything, then I looked in Joe's relationship panel and saw the crossed-out lightening bolt. I laughed so hard at that!

I actually once got to use the chemistry system. A sim of mine had chemistry tward a sim, but he did not have chemistry tward her. He was rejecting the pie menu icons with a lightning bolt. He did however tell her that he liked glasses. Once she put on glasses, he accepted the interactions marked with a lightning bolt.

I haven't seen any interactions with lightning bolts on them, - or else I'm not paying that much attention to them.  :-\

Wait, my bad - I know what you're talking about now - I was think about lightning bolts in the want slots.

The acceptance part is definitely more important than the ability to initiate an action.  It's good to hear that you've seen a real effect on this.  For my part, I just tested a Kiss / Romantic between two sims who were simply friends.  They had 3 bolts of chemistry between them, and he accepted the kiss even though his LTR was only 40 with her.  It worked the other way, too, and she only had a 35 LTR with him.  My prior experience was that below 50 kisses were always rejected.

 - Gus

This helps. http://thesims2.ea.com/help/detail.php?help_id=177
And it does update frequently.

What else comes into play, as far as chemistry is concerned? I have a married couple who I've now discovered have no chemistry between them. They each fit the other's turn on/turn off profile (since they were married before NL, I adjusted their turn ons and turn offs to work with each other), and their astrological signs are neutral as far as he's concerned, repellant as far as she is. If I ask either one to ask "do you like what you see?", the response is always "eh", even though she had the custom hair that he liked. He also likes underwear (I'd rather consider it "lingerie", but whatever...), so I put her in her undies. Still, "eh.".The male has "fatness" as a turn off, so I tried making his wife fat, just to see what effect it would have. As expected, when she asked if he liked what he saw, he had the crossed out fatness thought balloon and acted disgusted. Put her back to fit, and he was back to "eh.".  He fulfills all her turn ons as well, yet she's still indifferent towards him. I can see why she would feel that way, when you look at astrological compatibility, but I would think his response towards her would be more positive. Does personality play a role, possibly? Or aspiration? He's romance, she's family. It's not her reaction so much that puzzles me. It's his. I guess the fact that he has 2 strikes against him by her standards (his astrological sign and aspiration) must affect how he reacts to her, as well.

That's the chart I refer to, which is why I have so many questions :P.

If you look at that chart, Romance and Family are a bad mix, and you say that astrologically, one of them is not compatible with the other.  You may have a couple of strikes against you there and it will take more than turn ons/turn offs for the chemistry to be right.  You could always try the new ReNuYu Senso Orb and change one of their aspirations to a better mix.

A bad aspiration and a bad astro sign = bad chemistry (repellant) regardless of other features.  The fact they are married makes it Neuthral chemistry, since that's the lowest you can go and be "in love"

One thing I've noticed is that the game appears to be taking sexual preference into account with the chemistry thing, which it didn't before.  I have a new Sim who so far has only fancied men (he's still neutral in preference as he hasn't had any romantic encounters yet), but in each case although he's found them "Hot", there has been no lightning bolt, which suggests they don't reciprocate his feelings.  I know for a fact that two of them are very straight, but the third is AC/DC, so presumably there are other factors involved as well.  It's a little confusing and it would help greatly to have another sign for "I fancy you but you don't fancy me", so if necessary we could work on improving things.

I'd also LOVE to see a separate bar within Relationships to list all the Sims my Sim is furious with.  To find them, I have to scroll right to the end of the friendship list and this can take ages with some Sims.  Not only that, if I scroll along too far, the whole thing sort of jumps back to the end when it reaches the beginning (the backward arrow doesn't disappear) and I can't get back to the beginning without great difficulty, if at all.  A Furious list would be an extremely welcome addition to the game, even more so if it showed which Sims were furious with my Sim as well.  There doesn't seem to be anything indicating that.

Okay--you all went and done it!  I finally had to register here because this is such a fun topic!

I've been having rather a blast with the whole chemistry thing, and a lot of the reason is because now I have sim-spouses swooning over their mates like crazy--the way it should've been from the get-go!  I mean, after all, how many of us walk down the street, look at a slut and swoon?

I just figured out the whole lightning bolt with the interactions thing yesterday, and indeed it does cause for some sped-up romances.  I've also figured out a few things that will help seriously with the attractions.

For one thing, whenever I make a couple of sims I want to have go together, I've always tried to make their astrological signs compatible.  Although this doesn't always encourage spontaneous relationships about 9 times out of 10 it works a treat.  One thing I found in the past (pre-NL) was that making two sims the same sign was a boon to getting them to want to spend time together.

Yesterday I made a new couple, two single sims, moved them into their own houses.  I set them both as family sims, both Cancers.  Aziza's attracted to glasses and facial hair (Eben has both).  Eben likes brown hair and make-up and Aziza has both.  I had him check her out and *poof* four lightning bolts!

This pair ended up spending part of a day together, mainly talking, playing Red Hands and stuff like that.  Then they had a date which quickly turned into a Dream Date.  While playing with some other sims I remember looking at those lightning bolts and thinking, "No way!  There's no way they can 'make out' with a relationship that low!"  Or "there's no way they can 'slow dance' when they just met!"  That's when I started experimenting and sure enough, those sims with equal attractions would definitely accept those interactions from the other sim.

The thing is, it's always been romantic interactions which are the true 'best friend' makers.  I've always thought it'd be nice if all sims could make best friends that quickly.  However, with TS2 alone, about the fastest I could have a couple ready to marry would be within three sim days of having met each other, and that was usually playing both of them three days, having them spend all reasonable time together (they do have to sleep and study occasionally).  After playing Eben and Aziza for a total of 2 sim days combined, Eben woke up the next morning and suddenly realized he wanted to marry Aziza.  Now that's fast!

Can happen even quicker than that. I've had first dates where the Want "get married to Mai" (Mai being my character) has appeared in the NPC's Wants list.

Yes I had that when Prof. Weldon Go was kindly (ha!) provided by the matchmaker from hell!  They said hello and he wanted to marry my sim!

I loved it when Skip walked into the bathroom where Brandi was taking a bath, and he had all these lightening bolts swirling around his head!  It's great to see a husband still turned on by seeing his wife naked after having three kids. :)

Edit:  I just looked at the chart mentioned above, and I am confused because it doesn't list the same things going across as it does going down.  For instance, reading the cheese aspiration across the bottom says that cheese is neutral with anything else but cheese, but reading down from the right it says cheese is also good with Fortune (wealth) and Pleasure.  How can that be?

This may be a stupid question, but....

What is a "cheese" aspiration and where do you see it in the game?  It's not the same as the new "pleasure" aspiration, is it?  Can somebody please explain? 

Thanks,
Karen

Hehe, I asked this too.  It's the grilled cheese aspiration that sometimes occurs when your sim attempts to use the new reward object to change aspiration in green aspiration state.  All your sim wants to do is serve grilled cheese, talk about grilled cheese, eat grilled cheese, serve grilled cheese to a certain sim, etc, and fears having bad conversations about grilled cheese, burning grilled cheese, or eating burnt grilled cheese.  Gets old real fast. :)

Oh....  Thanks for clarifying.  I've used the object a couple of times, but never had it fail.  It's so much easier just to use Merola's painting to change aspirations if you need to.  The grilled cheese thing sounds pretty stupid to me, it's just as well that I've never run into it in actual gameplay.

Karen

Doesn't that crack you up?!  Or, if one if using the toilet and the other, who has just taken a shower, comes into the bathroom take a shower again just to get undressed in front of their spouse.

Well, it's funny to see once, and then you're tired of it.

I like the grilled cheese aspiration for the same reason I like married family sims. Easy to keep in platinum. Married family sims got their woohoo chain for a once a day platinum (twice if you lock the woohoo and save it), and grilled cheese go into platinum by serving grilled cheese to their family. They get the want to serve it, then several wants in a row for serving to someone, and it's fufilled each time that someone takes a bite.
The scope out the room appears to tell you the most attractive sim in the room. The lack of a lightning bolt doesn't mean it's not reciprocated, it means he's not really attracted to them. The lighning bolts are like all other aspects of the relationship panel, it only shows what your sim thinks. One sim can have a lightning bolt while the other doesn't. So it's not that the other sim is straight, just that your sim doesn't dig him as much as you would think, what with him saying "He is HOT!!" and all.
Hell Yeah.
The chart isn't a representation of mutual attraction, simply what one side of the relationship thinks. A cheese sim will only be good with another chesse sim, but a fortune or pleasure sim will like the cheese sim regardless of the fact that the cheese sim doesn't care about them.

The "furious" thing has me confused, too. I'm a very confused person.  :P
The teen daughter of one of my sims is furious with her father and grandfather. They are not furious with her. They have done nothing wrong, either. The only thing I can think of is that she was cleaning up puddles in the bathroom where her dad and grandfather were in a lock-up and both pee'd on the floor. Could that be the reason they're on her shit list right now? Pardon the pun.

And the chemistry thing. OY. Another confusing situation. The same romance sim I mentioned above has a lightning bolt in his panel for his brother's wife. She has one for him, as well. If I have him "scope room" while she's in it, he'll say "Dayna is hot!". If she scopes room, she says "eh.". If I have her ask him "Do you like what you see?", he shows his approval, with the hearts swirling. If he asks her, she says "eh.". Poor guy just isn't impressing anybody, these days! (Coincidentally, he's the original sim that I uploaded for Ancient Sim- the one she was describing above, who was also having bad luck. He's hot, I tell you. Hot! Tell 'em, Ancient! lol) Anyway, they're both Gemini, and both romance. Both have lightening bolts for each other. Both meet the criteria for the other's turn ons. And they're both best friends. What the hell? Is it because she considers him family? He has the flirt options available for her, but she doesn't for him. She can give him a friendly hug and a family kiss. Yet she still swoons over him. I'll bet it does have to do with the fact that he's considered family, now that I think about it...     

Yup, that'd be it if she's a neat Sim (I think more than 6 points). My friend was playing a dorm and every time she let her Sims go off and do their own thing, they would clean up a puddle and then go kick whoever's ass that left it. And if they lost the fight, they'd get even more furious and try to kick their asses again. They hardly got any work done because they were busy attacking everyone they lived with.

Yes, she's very neat. So that answers that! Thanks for the info.

Yes that is what it means a crossed out lightening bolt means that they are repelled, no lightning bolt is neutral, one is some attraction, 2 is lots of attraction and 3 means they can't keep their hands off each other and if one of them is maried to somebody  else and the spouse in the same room then you are in trouble.

Man it sure does. I have a married couple that attracted to each other. The cool thing is that they were this way before Nightlife, so it seems there is a little bit of the attraction system in the base game somewhere.

In another post, I said I wouldn't do this for fear of anger/slapping/etc., but I did it anyway out of curiosity - I created two sims who were totally incompatible, according to the chart provided by the Sims 2 website (not sure how accurate the chart is - but it's the only thing I had to go by).  I found them to be very boring in their relationship.  That's not to say mixing up another set of horoscopes and aspirations wouldn't cause some negative heat, but at least this couple didn't exhibit anything out of the ordinary - just plain old Sims 2 behavior.  They, obviously, have a neutral relationship.  This family is playable, they are not dysfunctional by any means; however, they are too predictable.

As far as relationships go, my opinion is there are 3 types:  the good, the neutral and the ugly - the neutral being the more predictable of the three, with really no chemistry at all in the relationship.  It just exists as a 100/100 relationship - a Sims 2 relationship.  The other two, of course, are self-explanatory.

Chemistry rids this game of predictability - whether it be good or bad.  I have to admit, I really had a good laugh watching Mortimor Goth go head-to-head with a townie in a clothing store, with ole' Morty kicking his can and then going after him again.

These are just my thoughts and opinions and I enjoy sharing them with you. ;)