More Awesome Than You!

Lately I've been wondering if there's any way to make the social aspects of the Sims a bit more challenging, as well as make them have the slightest bit of realism to them. I mean, it seems odd that you can force anyone to love you just by constantly getting in their face and yammering at them. Or that nearly everyone is so darned friendly! So I guess I'm asking if anyone knows if any of the following are possible to mod in the game (or if a mod already exists)...

1) Making negative reactions in social interactions stronger / more likely. Currently the game's math is strongly skewed to make Sims move towards friendship even when they have little in common ("I hated you at first, but now that you've forced me to chat with you for hours, I love you!").

2) Making a pair of Sims' personality traits determine their min/max friendship levels. For example, if 2 Sims have nothing at all in common and have clashing personality traits, their maximum long-term relationship score might be 25 - even if they manage to have a conversation without hating each other, there's no basis for them to become lifelong pals/lovers. Finding someone who you hit it off with (best friend / lover) should be a big deal, even for a Sim!

3) Making crushes/love require higher relationship scores than friendship, to avoid the current situation that seems to be "Hey, we had a nice talk and you are the proper gender, so I love you!" Contrary to bad romantic comedies, men and women can be friends w/o wanting to jump each other.

4) Making a Sim's personality traits determine what relationship level is needed to Woohoo. Let's face it, some people are slutty. This could also expand to the other romantic options.

Basically, I'd just like socializing for my Sims to be a bit challenging, and to make finding them friends/romance more rewarding. Plus, they make my social skills look even worse than they are!

Challenging, no.  But Pes' romancemod and noinstantloves and TJ's ACR can allow you to fine-tune romantic interaction throughout your 'hood.  The former two cover for the fact that the romance engine in the game sucks as-is, and the latter is for those who like romance in the euphemistic sense rather than the hearts and flowers BS.

Sims who already have bad relationships are less likely to accept social interactions, although again as shipped the thresholds are rather low, and LTR already somewhat covers the case of "we had one great conversation and now we're bestest buds".  I'd be wary of a mod that capped LTR and/or STR on any personality criteria, however, as it would put someone else's perspective as to what gets along in a higher priority than my own storytelling urge.

The factors determining whether sims left to themselves become friendly or not depends on a number of things, but nothing will really change your ability to force the issue by fiat if you're hellbent on doing it. One thing to note is that sim relationships invariably gravitate towards certain values: -100, 0, 100. There is basically no real way to avoid the fact that you will pretty much always move to one of those values. If you establish a positive or negative reaction and try to keep it, or let your sims do this, it will invariably move towards 100/100 or -100/-100. Otherwise, if you seperate them and don't let them interact, it will move to 0.

I don't know that this limit on relationships would be anymore lifelike. I've been friends with several people that I've had little to nothing in common with, and am still friends with one of them to this day.

Besides, think of the poor popularity Sims! :P

I like the suggestion as I'm a realism-freak. The thing is, people can be quite good neighbours even if they don't have anything in common. Let's take an example from life:

I just graduated from the career counseling education with a bachelor's degree which took three years. During this time, I was in a group with six other people which I had a lot of contact with, but not really anything in common with (a former artist, a former politician, a former house-wife, etc). I became 'friends' with them, but no amount of time would make me call them up now just to chat away some time with them, and I think the bonds are quickly dissolving as I type. My real friends however are friends even if we don't speak for months, simply because we have more in common. I can't see anything change from that. The mates from the education however, they seemed to have more in common and I think three of them are buddies from now on.

Taking it back to the sims, I would realy like to back the OP up on this. There should be a threshold on how good friends (or bad enemies) uo could be with others.

Well, that's when you would use the "off" option on such a mod... :)


The boring thing is how it's -extremely- likely that the numbers will go to 100. It would make the game infinitely more fun to actually -play- if some Sims just plain didn't like the Sim I was controlling.

Imagine you take your Sim to a night club... you have him check out the room, target a nice-looking lady, shimmy up to her, lay on the charm... and she spurns him. Currently, the normal reaction in the Sims is to just do it again... and again... because the numbers nearly always head to +100. I feel it would be far more interesting if that weren't the case, and that night at the club might be spent having the Sim try his luck with a handful of ladies before finally finding one that he connects with... or not, and wandering home alone.

(Did I just share too much about my Friday nights?)

Throw in the ability for initially positive relationships to max out well below true love, and you have short flings and failed relationships that don't require boinking the maid while your lover is asleep on the couch. If we can't just walk into a crowded room, pick someone at random to be our soulmate, then harass them until they acquiesce, why are those jerk Sims so lucky?

I'd love it if there were a version of the Sims that was actually fun and unteresting to -play- as a game (an RPG of sorts), rather than having my interaction with the world essentially feel like a cheat.


I bet you didn't actually have -nothing- in common with them - I mean, you both dislike terrorists, right? Take a look at every skill stat, personality stat, aspiration and like/dislike in the Sims, and I'll bet you'd find something, even in that limited approximation of human personality.


Part of the effect of changes like these would be making some aspects of the game harder... but currently most of those goals are so easy as to lack any challenge beyond your free time and attention span.


I just thought of how many of my childhood friends started out with a fight... but after that initial negative, we found we had a lot in common, and some of those guys are still my friends today. Conversely, I'm sure everyone has known people they had an instant connection with, only to find out as time went on that the initial positive didn't outweigh their differences.

The Sims is so heavily skewed towards a world where everyone is buddies that some of the most interesting social aspects are lost. Not to mention the loss of what could be challenging and rewarding gameplay. It also makes each Sim feel remarkably similar and interchangable. If my Sim is an out of shape and anti-social romance Sim, it doesn't really matter - he just needs to accost people an extra time or two before they fall madly in love with him. Even with an expert player controlling him, his life should be extremely hard. It would make him feel more like a unique little being, and would make helping him succeed feel like a true accomplishment.

The romancemod is great for dealing with the stupid Maxian jealousy interactions.  I find it quite realistic that one or two of my romance Sim's lovers have become upset when he woohoos with a new lover, but others seem to take it in stride (provided that there is no formal relationship like steady/engaged/married).  I also find it interesting that these offended female sims take a lot more time to become friends again and will refuse interactions to improve the relationship in some cases, which is realistic.

I agree however, that normally any Sim my playables might meet are easily made friends and best friends with a little persistence.  What I have trouble with is negative reactions. 

For me, negative relationships are much harder to get than positive.  It seems that there are a limited number of negative interactions to do to other Sims (argue, annoy, prank).  It's difficult for me to make enemies in my game.  Perhaps I don't spend enough time arguing, or maybe my sims are not grouchy enough.  I don't think I have ever had more than one fight.  It would be more realistic to have sims who didn't all imediately like each other, or didn't want to be friends right after meeting another person.

I've seen the pop-up box that says "I just met this sim but I really want to get to know them better.  I think we could be friends." (or something like that).  Why not "I just met this sim and I think if I ever see him again I'll kick his ass."

I suggest also using JMP's 'enemiesaccumulate' mod -- that keeps negative relationships negative, instead of their natural progression towards buddies if your sim doesn't force the issue.

I suppose a harder game would be nicer, but I don't find popularity Sims to be having an easy time of making friends. Right now, they have to know basically everyone in the neighborhood to fulfill the twenty best friends want. Of course, my neighborhood is brand new anyway.

It would have to depend on what the terrorist was trying to do, but I get your point.

Similarities aren't the only thing to look at, though. People with similar personalities may hate each other. Similar interests are more liable to show you someone you'd get along with, and I would hope that the amount of skills a Sim has wouldn't affect their relationship that much.

I've slept with several a few people that I've had little to nothing in common with.  Maybe even a couple that I've actually hated, or ended up hating.  :P


In general... I like the idea.  I just don't see it being feasible with the sims... unless someone (not me :P) were willing to do something along the lines of the romancemod in size/scope that actually affected how general relationships worked.


Instead of having this friendship curve with min/max at -100,0, and +100, it would be neat if there were multiple potential min/max values dependent on multiple factors, such as personality, aspiration, mood, zodiac sign, gender pref, and interests - with maybe a bit randomness thrown in there since sometimes there are moments where a person can wear you down, or something happens that bumps you over that edge.


The problem would be, much like the rest of the game, is the is no real randomness and there is no real differences.  Everything is pretty much a bit to the sims.  An interaction is either On or Off, and there is no true 'artificial intellgience' as it were.  Sims are not intelligent because they cannot learn from past behaviour.  Sure they might remember an occurrence of something,  but those memories hardly ever influence any present or future behaviour.  Just because a sim remembered, obsessively mind you, that they burned pancakes the first time they tried to make it, it doesn't mean they won't burn pancakes again.  Just because they remember being shocked by trying to repair something, doesn't mean they won't sadorandomly choose that interaction yet again.

As Pescado has pointed out numerous times, the game just sadorandomly chooses the same interactions over and over, whatever happens to be the sim's latest obsession.  There really are no long lasting consequences that would significantly alter future behaviour.  This notion of "finding the best action" seems to be something that is hardcoded and isn't easily modifiable.  You might be able to improve things slightly with mods, such as romancemod, ACR, and dizzy's  process autonomy changes, but ultimately, you still end up with sadorandomly repetitive behaviour.  The thing about sims is... everything to them in game is an object.  Other sims are objects to them, and interactions are just things that they sadorandomly choose to attempt, just because the game tells them that interaction is available to them, and supposedly advertises to whatever motives they "think" it will satisfy (which, 9 times out of 10, it doesn't :P).


Ste

I've had that happen before too.  :-X


I have to say that people are typically pushed over the edge when things become a bit too much. I would think that it would relate more to aspiration, rather than just being completely random. There are some people that just rub you the wrong way for whatever reason, so I think that there should be some randomness, but just not when it has to do with rejection.

You'll get no judgement from me.  ;)

I just hate the fact that I either typed " or ' twice in there, so much that I had to go back and edit my post. :P



True.  I was thinking tho, for either way... as there are some people who tend to be pretty persistent, that you may not otherwise have considered in a certain way, but given the right circumstances, sometimes involving inebriation or intoxication by some other substance ::) you might see someone in a whole different light.  Eh... heh.  Or you know, sometimes random things happen to fall into place, the stars and planets align, and you may end up doing something (or someone) that you otherwise might not have.  Sometimes it can be a good thing... sometimes it can be a bad thing. lol. :D


Ste

It's interesting to note that the Life Stories games actually makes it HARDER to make friends, even without the artificial capping, because relationship change from time is disabled, meaning you can't simply "cook" LTR. Without relationship decay, the need to constantly call friends is absent, and there isn't the same pressure to drive relations straight to 100 or the ability to simply do nothing and gain 9 free LTR a day, making it MUCH MUCH HARDER to get it.

I agree that Sim relationships are too easy. My problem is more that you can get them maxed out really fast and then it just sits there - there's no change in STR/LTR unless you make one sim do something to upset another. I'd rather have more autonomous negative behavior, and make it continue even if two sims have a high relationship score.

Rather than type out the whole thing, I'll just post the link to the thread I started about it: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6633.0.html

Actually, there is something quite close to true randomness, which is why there are no real differences. :)

A little less randomness and a little more reliance on the Sims' stats would provide real differences between Sims. The randomness not favoring everyone becoming buddies would add more differences.

A true learning AI will have to wait at least until The Sims3. But something that on the surface appears like a unique AI for each Sim would be a great improvement over the current extreme predictability.


The Life Stories concept greatly appeals to me, as I like to play a single a single Sim as a roleplaying endeavor. I try to never play the other characters in my house, which does mean that my little Sim is a frequent widower, but what are ya gonna do?

The huge flaw in Life Stories is that the game are SO heavily scripted that the game is 99% on rails. A looser story with more choices and branches could retain the scripting aspect that makes the game different than The Sims, while giving the player some feeling of choice and control over the outcome of the story. But that's another topic... :)


Yeah, there's a lot of overlap in our posts. With relationships that are more heavily affected by likes / traits / etc, you could easily have characters that are generally jerks, even occasionally to each other, but if they share a lot in common, would get to have lots of make-up-sex... :)

I'm a games programmer, but I haven't had time enough to delve into the Sims' modding abilities to know if the ideas are even feasable or not. Perhaps it's all just a pipe dream for the Sims3... then again, the Sims seems to not have much focus on having a 'game' as it does on letting (forcing?) you be the 'puppet master'. Sure, that's fun as well, but it would be great to occasionally not know if my little Sim is going to succeed or not, so maybe I'm waiting for another (mythical) game... :)

I too would like for relationships to be more difficult to maintain. It is unrealistic to me that it takes more effort to damage a relationship that it does to maintain it. The romance of a marriage should fade if the couple doesn't make time in their busy lives to interact and work at keeping their love alive. Every marriage in my neighborhood is perfect by default, that just doesn't seem right. 

The paradox of maintenance is that more maintenance will actually make it EASIER to keep. If there is no "maintenance", you're not obligated to do anything, so any state becomes a potentially stable state. More maintenance would simply force this tiresome chore on you. It's the same reason why in Life Stories, a relationship can be allowed to simply "slide" at 60, but in the Real Thing, everything goes to 100/100 because you're forced to maintain it. Maintenance turns things into all or nothing.

O.k. i think I get it...no I don't, but I trust you.

Basically, there are two outcomes to relationship decay:

1. Players do not maintain them, and all relationships thus collapse.
2. Players DO maintain them, and naturally, overcompensate in an attempt to reduce the amount of maintenance, or simply because maintaining at a very specific level is more work than simply letting it go to 100. Relationships now never collapse because of overcompensation in maintenance.

It is believed that "enemies accumulate" currently maintains a satisfactory balance between these two extremes.

But, if Sims' personalities affected their max LTR with other Sims, AND made interactions less positive / more volatile, the result would be that chemistry and compatiblity would be more important, making any relationship successful would be more rewarding, and making 'incompatible' Sims a successful couple (or friends even) would be an actual challenge.

In that situation, two Sims with similar interests and personalities would have a max LTR of 100, and would be more likely to have positive interactions, so could probably remain at or near 100 with nothing more than conversation over a meal now and then.

Conversely, somewhat compatible Sims might have a max LTR of 80, and would have a few more negative interactions, making it necesarry to set aside some "couples time" if you want them to stay on good terms.

Somewhat incompatible Sims might have a max LTR of 60, making their relationship a real struggle, and very volatile / prone to fights + making up, etc...

Very incompatible Sims might have a max LTR of 20, making it impossible for them to get along beyond the short-term, and making them very likely to become enemies at the drop of a hat.

Seeing that kind of wide array of personalities and interactions in the game would make it infinitely more engaging to me, and greatly reduce the feeling that beyond their appearance nothing about a Sim really matters. If a player chooses a friend/mate for their Sim that is incompatible, the increased maintenance required to keep the relationship going becomes a balancing factor (maintenance might be the wrong word as well, since their social interactions wouldn't reliably push their STR/LTR upwards any longer - them interacting could just lead to a fight) - you might even choose to have your Sim cheat on their spouse because another Sim is easier to get a long with... the social/relationship system in the game would have far more depth.

Out of curiosity, are the following possible to mod currently w/ what is known about BHAVs, etc?

1) Capping a Sims' LTR with another Sim (I know Life Stories does this for 'your' Sim)

2) Changing how a positive/negative social interaction is calculated (like if a Chat is successful or fails)

3) Changing the calculation for how many points a social interaction gives (like a positive Chat giving +5 STR)

In theory, all of the above could be changed, but only very messily, and on a less than logically determinable basis. Also, sims don't know when to stop, so the nature of "best action" will either cause them to ALWAYS pick that action, or to NEVER pick that action, so if you make a relationship-destroying interaction available autonomously, it will either be chosen CONSTANTLY, or not at all, if sim are left to themselves.

The readme for enemies accumulate is a little confusing as it appears to talk more about the fight club than the status of enemies. I understood the part about the enemies stay enemies instead of 'wearing off' if you don't continue to interact with them, but I need to know if a former enemy is 'recoverable' with the mod in place.

I had a married couple where the wife caught the husband cheating more than once and they became enemies. I tried to get them to at least not hate each other for the children's sake. First I let the furiousness wear off, then I attempted to have them interact in non-threatening ways. But I never could get the enemy icon removed and they would soon be fighting again. Is that because of the enemies accumulate mod or because I just didn't know how to work on their relationship properly?

You can stop being enemies if you try hard enough, but it won't automagically happen if you do nothing. In fact, until you've done so, things will likely get worse, especially if they are not nice sims, as mean sims hold grudges instead of forgiving.

Nice!


Not nice! :)


I wasn't actually thinking of adding any interactions, or changing the logic that determines which action gets picked.

I was trying to keep things (relatively) simple, by limiting changes to the logic that determines the results of the action.

For example, a Sim would still decide when to try to Chat with another Sim in the same way. What would change is the logic that decides if the chat "succeeds" or not, and/or the +/- point changes on success/failure.

So the Sim wouldn't be doing anything smarter/dumber than they currently do, the result would just be less likely to push their relationship to 100, and take into greater account the two Sims' personalities.

Such a mod might make Decay work better as well... two incompatible Sims might forget they hate each other, but if their conflicting personalities make interactions have a 90% chance of failure, they'll remember soon enough. :)

If that were combined with their personalities also determining their min/max LTR, you would no longer see all relationships going to -100/-100 or 100/100, and each relationship would feel unique.

The logic of whether or not a chat "succeeds" or "fails" is determined purely by the randomly chosen conversational topic, and relationship has no influence at all. Indeed, it is not certain the code even knows who the sim is talking to. Research into making topic selection more intelligent has been looked into for awhile. Personality has basically no influence on this. However, I *HAVE* had positive results with getting sims to sit in sullen silence instead of opening their yaps to any random stranger they see, when outside of the direct "chat" action, so they don't attempt to initiate forced-friendship at all.

Once positive tone is established, chat tends to play little to no real role. Unless your sim is "Fingers in Ears" Lythdan, anyway. Lythdan manages to piss everyone off, because she picks the topic she hates least to initiate the conversation, then when the other sim responds with the same topic, thinking it to be a topic of conversation, Lythdan goes FINGERS IN EARS!

And how exactly do you propose that be determined? How friendships work even in HUMANS is hardly a scientifically determinable phenomenon! Where would these caps be? How would they be determined? All of this is highly unanswerable.

I see...

So are the point totals given for success/fail in Chat alterable? Altering those would accomplish something similar.

Is the success/fail result for other social interactions moddable, or is it hardcoded to check only how much the Sim likes the other Sim?


You really HATE your sims doing anything without you, huh? :)


Well, it IS a game, and the game has already set the rules, they are just far too lenient for those rules to mean much.

The Sims has already established that compatiblity is determined by common Likes/Dislikes, Chemistry, and similar Traits (Nice, Lazy, etc). The current game just makes 100/100 so easy and likely that those factors become insignificant.

So I'd assign a point value to each Sim characteristic I want to include to total -100 to +100... it's just a matter of tweaking weights. Then to find the LTR cap for 2 Sims, you just see how many of those points they have.

It would certainly be a better model than all friends and lovers being equal and perfect.

I'm not trying to answer some grand question of the universe, I'm just trying to make an aspect of a game more interesting, challenging, and fun. :)

I don't know if I'd like the "relationship cap" idea. I'd like the potential for good relationships to be there, but I'd like it to be more challenging to keep it that way.

I think it could be better accomplished by having more autonomous negative behavior from mean sims, if such a thing is even possible (is it?) As it is, it seems that mean sims do "mean things" (argue, annoy, insult, etc.) to sims they don't know very well or don't like. But when they get to a decent relationship score with that sim, the mean things stop. Why? I'm not saying that mean sims should only do mean things to other sims, but the way it is now, the only actions sims perform autonomously are relationship-boosting actions. I'd just like to see that balanced out with some autonomous actions that are relationship-damaging (slightly). That way you can either let it go and it gets progressively worse, or you can keep working to make them "make up."

Sorry, don't mean to take over your thread with my own ideas. ;) Just throwing it out there since we're kind of looking for the same effect here.

I had a mean sim who would argue with her lovers autonomously after woohooing, was fun to watch  :D

"You call that a woohoo?  20 seconds?  I can have more fun by myself!"  ;D

Um, where might one find this readme?  After poking around a bit, I see that there are quite a few hacks that are only available in the director's cut, which doesn't contain a rtfm file. 

And if this has been addressed elsewhere, please forgive me: is there any sort of hack that makes romantic relationships decay?  I had a romance sim who "settled down" and turned into a wealth sim, and even though she hasn't called any of her university lovers in ages, she's still in love with them.  She's not even friends with a good chunk of them -- it seems that love would decay faster than friendship if not maintained.  Or maybe my game is broken?  I don't know.

I think it's because they're not interacting. Like, with best friends, you can go down to about 20/20 or something, but still be 'best friends'. However, when you interact, it's like it's updated so you lose the best-friendship.

I imagine love works in mostly the same way, but I know people can have a bad relationship (like in a marriage after an affair) and still be in love. But it could be that their LTR was still high enough to support being in love.

Yea, I've seen sims still in love with college lovers get the 'boing' and the broken heart symbol if they call the old lover after the relationship has decayed low enough.

You know, you are right. There is no readme. The name itself should have tipped me off to the fact that I wrote it myself. The "readme" from MATY is always called RTFM.

Whenever a mod from here doesn't have an RTFM, I make myself a readme file by copying and pasting relevant text from thread questions. Much of my info came from a thread called "hack descriptions" or something similar. When I first started making my own readme files, I wasn't as good at it as I am now. First, I was unfamiliar with the hacks and hadn't experienced them in my game for very long, so I couldn't write anything from experience. Secondly, I neglected to copy the url from which I was quoting, which I now include so I can find my way back.

The readme for enemies accumulate is from 8/2006 and probably contains a mish-mash of info from both the enemies accumulate mod and the fight club.  If anyone is interested, this is what I had for the enemies accumulate readme. You can see how I managed to confuse myself.

It alters relationship decay slightly, making it so enemies will accumulate rather than disappear if you don't see each other for a bit, and moves relationship decay to a more sane hour instead of "we all hate you now". Also adds a slight offset to relationship loss so it's not an immediate mass scramble at the decay hour to get things patched before they all hate you now, and generally makes it less hectic and messy (although it doesn't really make things easier!).

Fights aren't infinite, but instead of the results of a fight being ignored, so you could see a sim winning the entire fight and then suddenly lose for no obvious reason, the fight rules are changed so that a certain number of randomly determined victories must be achieved in rounds. How it works is that every round, you will see the fight loop play, and whichever sim appears to be winning will gain an increasing advantage in the next round. The advantage will accumulate until the requisite number of victories is achieved, or the losing sim manages to make a comeback, which resets the advantage back to 0. The victor in a fight is the sim which achieves a certain preset number of victories over and above that of his opponent. So if the randomly determined count is 5, then the winning sim must win 5 rounds more than the loser.

If the sims are evenly matched, it will be bloody and long, but the advantage shift will tend to bring things to a closer sooner than pure randomwalk. Grouchy sims will enjoy fighting, though. Fighting is fun for them.

Good relationships would still be possible - just not a 'perfect' relationship with every single person in the Sims world.

STR would be unaffected, so you could still have somewhat incompatible Sims have short-term happy interactions.

The cap on LTR would take some tweaking to get working well, but I would think that ideally most Sims would still have plenty of other Sims who match in the "true love" or higher LTR range. Some would be barely over that point, meaning it would take constant attention (and a bit of luck) to keep them in love. Others would be in a safer range, but still not 100, so would be more volatile than current relationships, but still not generally hard to keep on good terms. Finally, a rare few would be a 'perfect match', able to hit 100 LTR, and those 'true loves' would be an exciting and important find while playing the game.

IF such a system were added, I'd think a simple interaction like "Check Sim Out" would be needed, to give players a bit of a clue as to what range a Sim falls into. Not an exact number, but something like "This Sim really rubs me the wrong way.", or "I don't think I could ever get tired of spending time with this Sim", etc.


Well, not exactly. :)

I'm not that concerned with Sims' autonomous behavior (although I agree a bit more negative behavior would be more realistic / interesting). I'm more concerned with making the Sims an interesting and fun game to -play-. The current game makes me feel like I'm exploiting it any time I do pretty much anything, because the results are so easy and predictable. Anything I want my Sim to do or be, will happen. I frequently install the Sims, because I absolutely love the concept. I frequently uninstall the Sims because I grow bored with my Sims always turning out perfect and I have no interest in playing completely 'hands-off' and watching a fish tank of pixellated people. I NEED to control SOMEBODY! :)

If I decide to make a Don-Juan Sim, I don't want his romatic aspirations to -always- be an easy success. I'd love it if (based on his skills and personality), he occasionally got slapped / yelled at / attacked. If I make a Sim that's looking for true love, I'd love for that 'special someone' to actually feel special, not just be any random Sim I pick. If I make -any- Sim, I'd love for them to have an assortment of varying levels friends -and- enemies, without me having to force the issue by randomly poking people. The social aspects of the Sims are the most interesting concept to me, but the implementation strips away 90% of the potential.

But you may be right that capping the LTR may not be the ideal method to improve things. It just seemed to me (as a game programmer, albeit with limited knowledge of Sims-modding) to be the easiest method.

Ideally, I'd change the +/- for every social interaction. :)

1) Make non-chat interactions capable of a negative result, even if STR/LTR is high enough to succeed. This would eliminate the current ease of maintaining relationships by sticking to the 100% safe interactions. If your Sim is incompatible with another Sim, attempting to kiss them could result in a relationship -loss- (you banged noses and drooled on them, you schmuck!).

2) Make all interactions have varying +/- STR/LTR effects, based on compatibility. Kiss a Sim that your Sim is very compatible with, and the gain might be double the current amount (sparks fly!). Kiss one that is incompatible, and the gain would be less substantial (fizzle). Similarly, the +/- for chats would be based on how -much- the Sim likes that topic. Talk sports to a sports nut, get +5. Talk sports to someone with only a casual interest, get +2. Talk sports to a sports hater, get -5.

I think that would accomplish the goal as well, and be significantly easier for the player to figure out what is happening and why. It would make autonomous interactions more interesting as a side-effect. But are (1) and (2) possible to mod?

If so, I might take it on as a side-project, although I'm not sure if programming games as a job, AND as a hobby would be a healthy prospect. :)

I would definately try it if you came up with something.

It's a video game. It's ALWAYS going to be easy and predictable. Everything is ultimately formulaic.

Doesn't this already happen?

And you seriously expect a computer to be able to model the vagaries of social dynamics? We don't even understand them ourselves, much less know how to program this into a computer!

This already happens. Some interactions are dependent on your target's mood for succeed, something which is not readily ascertainable with any useful degree of precision. In fact, you can see this sort of thing happening already with X-bolt sims.

To some degree, this already exists, as a part of the system added in NL: Better boltage causes higher-level actions to be unlocked sooner, which mostly just lets you crash and burn more spectacularly, which I guess is what you wanted anyway.

This already happens. In fact, that's pretty much exactly what happens. Have you actually played it?

Rather than just saying "it'd be swell if personality had more of an impact", I'm curious how you would apply these influences and caps based on what traits.  Just give benchmark figures, see how the community takes to them, and you'll see why a mod like this wouldn't really take off even if it were created.  Things that sound good in the vaguest terms can become clearer with specifics, so let's hear some of your specifics.  Not to mention the fact that once said specifics are known, you'll be back to your regular formulaic style of play.

More to the point, PCSims might not be the platform you're happiest with.  The lack of difficulty is partly due to Maxian expectations of your average simmer, and partly due to the fact that the game does as well as it does by covering so many bases.  First-person style playing has to be simple; to keep the storytellers from having to spend too much of their time on maintainence, to let hands-off style players enjoy their game, not to mention that if a single sim is challenging you've made families significantly more so.  If you're looking for a game based around challenging your skills as a single character throughout the game, you might be happier with a console game or a sims knockoff game.

This is fundamentally the case, that once the rules are known, everything comes trivial as it breaks down into simple mathematical analysis. Besides, what effect would "caps" really have? Right now, we have a cap which is the same, 100/100, but changing this would just either produce a new ceiling that we'd see as the new 100, or move things into "don't bother trying". It's like "bad" character development in an RPG, where you know one path dead ends far short of its potential: You never take that path.

That's a cop-out. Plenty of games manage to be challenging. Plenty of games manage to prevent you from knowing exactly how successful you'll be before you even start.


Unless you intentionally make it happen, no.

1) Chat until relationship is at X.
2) Use other interactions you know will succeed until relationship is at 100.
3) Rinse. Repeat.

That's a 100% sure-fire method of obtaining a new best friend or love in the current game. Personality traits, likes/dislikes, chemistry all become meaningless. Every Sim in the game will be a blissful friend or lover without fail.

To me, that's not interesting, challenging, or fun.


You're stating it as if it can't be done with 100% accuracy, it's pointless, as if it were a problem to be solved, with only one 'correct' solution.

I'm not interested in a perfectly accurate model at all. I'm looking at it as something that can be improved - the game ---is--- trying to model social dynamics, so unless they've already done it perfectly, why not try to improve on their attempt?

I'm also looking at it as a game system that currently fails to provide challenge or variety to the player. To improve that, you don't have to accurately model social dynamics, all you have to do is present a believable -appearance- of social dynamics.


Yeah, exactly. That's why I was thinking of it as a possible place to tweak and expand, since there's a clear 'decision' branch there.


No, something less than near-100% predictability is what I want. The Chemistry system doesn't currently address that at all. I'm talking about 2 Sims' personalities affecting all interactions instead of the STR/LTR which is currently used nearly all of the time.


As far as I've seen, successful chats are nearly always +5. Failed chats are -2. I can't recall ever seeing a -5. I wasn't suggesting this would be some brand new system, in fact the point was to make it as small (and hopefully easy) of a tweak as possible. In this case, the result would be a completely balanced scale from -5 to +5, with every value in-between, instead of the current system that skews -heavily- towards a +5 result. I guess I should have been more specific to get a real response.


Actually, I don't recall ever stating a goal for such a Mod to "take off" - I was merely asking for advice on what was possible before I devoted time to digging around in the internals. If people loved it, great. If not, well, then it'd be like 90% of the mods floating around. :)

I've already described the kinds of traits the game provides that can be used to determine compatibility. Specific figures are pointless before you even know what is possible. Further, specific figures would only be a first guess anyway, as such a system would require a great deal of tweaking to get a good result. Lastly, if public reception of such a mod were a concern, I'd likely make an effort to make the values changeable by the user.

As for it always resulting in formulaic gameplay, that is simply false. Removing the extreme predictability and known success of actions requires the player to react and rethink depending on the situation and the results.


Because I'd like to tweak an aspect of the game I find imperfect, I should go track down some nonexistant game and play it?


What game? If you don't do anything, it's not a game, it's a fishbowl. If there's no challenge or risk of failure, it's a dollhouse.


So? Shouldn't they be? Families currently don't add any challenge, they just add tedium and micromanagement.

Besides, I see sites like this as addressing that side of things, by providing mods that allow Sims to be left alone more without them doing something incredibly stupid and/or deadly, allowing the player to focus less on the mundane chores and more on the big decisions.

I'd just like some of those big decisions to involve not knowing the outcome of your choice before you've even put it in action.


Thanks but considering the Sims doesn't really have any competition, that's a fairly empty suggestion. Besides, I don't really need validation of my playstyle. It seems obvious that for many people, the only way for The Sims to provide uncertainty or a challenge is if they tie one (or both) hands behind their back via artifical rulesets and intentionally -not-playing- the game. If everyone else is okay with that, fine. I'm not trying to organize a political movement, I was just asking if some areas of the game even -could- be tweaked, not if anyone else wants them tweaked, or thinks I should go cross my fingers and hope for a "Fantasy Sims" game to appear under my pillow...

Got your fantasy games right here. (http://thesims2.ea.com/about/platforms_index.php?pid=About_more)  And that's not even counting the obvious ripoffs like the singles.  No, they're not the simming experience we already know and love, but they illustrate a point rather nicely.  If knockoffs that have a more first person style don't mesh with the community that well, that might be a sign that going that route with this game would be a bad idea.  The best we can hope for is a loosening of the scripting for the stories line, which might or might not be to your liking; from what I heard, the only real difficulty to them came from wondering whether or not a bug would hit.

You want one of two things, and I can't really tell which at the moment.  It sounds mostly like you'd be happiest if the dominant social strategy were tweaked, but that would only last until you worked out the new dominant social strategy for the new numbers.  Most puzzle style games have a very limited shelf life due to that.  The other would involve completely overhauling the socialization system for one in which every value would have some random modifier go at it, and as Pes pointed out we already have that.  If you keep using interactions with low rejection thresholds, of course they're going to succeed.  You're ultimately complaining that there are low-risk interactions in the game (I'd be upset if there weren't any), and that you can come in with perfect knowledge to make the most of them.

Really, I guess that's what it comes down to.  If you want this to be a "challenge", that's easy enough to cover too.  Have your don juan sim only romance townies (so you don't know their turn ons/offs), don't check the relationship panel, and don't go overboard with safe interactions before going after the riskier ones.  Otherwise you're effectively powerleveling and then complaining why early game monsters are so weak.

(I guess if one wanted to, it would be best to have a limit as to just how high a given social interaction could push relationships.  Chatting could only go so far before you'd need a riskier interaction to get along better, and the chat cutoff could be low enough that the other interactions could have a chance of failure.  This would be a huge project even if I'm not missing any complicating factors, however, and it still depends on the attraction system with its relatively high granularity.)


And on that note, need I remind you what the original working title for the game was?

While it's obviously not going to be everyone's cup of tea, I think if such a mod is indeed possible (and was created), there'd be a fair few Simmers who'd love it. I know I would...  ;D

Some thoughts for such a mod:


-STR shouldn't "decay" so to speak.  It should tend to drift towards the LTR.  The further the STR is from the LTR, the faster it drifts that way.

-LTR doesn't drift upwards because you got STR to 100 in one day.  It will continue to drift upwards towards the STR if the sim is actually "on the lot" whether physically or on the phone.  You don't have to interact with a sim compulsively to boost LTR, you have to interact enough to get them to "like" you (STR) and then just spend time near that sim for the LTR to go up.  The LTR gain while the sim is in the vicinity is greater than what it was previously, to compensate for the fact that it won't be going up at stupid times like when your sim is sleeping.

-When the sim isn't around or on the phone, LTR will slowly decay.  Because STR moves towards LTR, this leads to STR decay.  If STR is lower than LTR, the LTR decay is greater.

-LTR gain is boosted on dates, outings, and parties unless the score is bad.  This will change the playstyle for popularity sims.  No longer do they "win" by calling up random people until they get to 100 STR and then wait until they become best friends.  The fastest way to make a lot of best friends will be to throw a lot of big, successful parties.

-As for romantic interactions, attractiveness should play a MUCH bigger role than previously.  Because lets face it, you can be best friends with someone that you aren't attracted to, but you aren't going to suddenly fall in love with them.  If two sims have "Bad Chemistry" they can still be friends, but lovers will be impossible or nearly impossible (but don't despair, since bad chemistry can usually be remedied with makeovers.  It won't cause enough chemistry to make things EASY but it can still be possible)


These are just some ideas.  I don't even know how much of this would be possible.  The basic ideas are LTR only gains when the sim is around (even if you aren't interacting directly).
Simulating human relationships isn't easy, but I've no doubt we can do better than what's in place right now.

This is a good idea, providing a sim would be able to achieve at least a best friends relationship (for example, the cap should be no lower than 60/60) with any other sim.  I'd also be excited to see how this would work in family relationships too, where living together pretty much guarantees an easy 100/100 between parents and siblings as long as they have meals together.  You know, in all these years of Sims playing, I've never had a teen hate his/her family enough to run away.  I would love some variety in that aspect. 

But yes, I too would love to get excited about finding one true love, or one true best friend forever type of relationship.  And then they can have other "buddy" kind of best friends too, at 60/60 or 70/70 relationship caps.  Still high enough to count as best friends though. 


I use the ACR interaction "Will I Woohoo?" for this, which gives their attraction in a number.  It's very useful for getting an idea of my sim's interest in another before approaching.


MasterDinadan, I like these ideas too.

Basically, there are a lot of good ideas in this thread, and if someone made it, I would LOVE to play it.  Of course, I am nowhere near awesome enough to help out, other than testing it when it's ready :) 

I hope someone does look into it though.

This sounds good, but I would also like to see two sims who are in love fall out of love if there are no romantic interactions between them for a while. They could still be friends if there are no bad feelings and  you could decide if they will work it out and fall in love again, or stay together for the sake of the kids and have lovers on the side. That would also be helpful for relationships that are meant to be temporary. 
Me too.

When I play, I use the interest categories to make sims incompatible. When my sims turn to teen, I roll a set of interests based on aspiration and personality.
In one family, the father and son are sports mad, their eldest daughter is into fashion and music and the younger daughter is into politics and money. Every time there is a meal together, someone always looses relationship points because they are not "compatible". It's a simple way to ensure that there is a little more variety, and meal times are a instant top up to relationship points.

I would love to see a more complex set of socials, but I don't want to make the friendship aspect to difficult either, or my popularity and romance sims may die even earlier.  ;D

-Skadi

 

Someone posted a harder relationships hack at MTS2 here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=241232

It's probably less awesome than most, but it might be worth looking at to see how it works if anyone's still interested in making something like this. *shrugs*

I saw that.  I'm about to try it out right now.  I'll let you all know if it's any good. 

Yeah, I'll have to try that one out as well - it implements some of the things I was thinking of. It sounds like the initial meetings of Sims should be far more varied, since those first chats won't skew so heavily towards a positive result. I

AutonomousCasualRomance also seems to do a pretty nice job of basing interactions on attractiveness more than just 'we had a nice chat - let's get married!'

I like MasterDinadan's idea of specific actions being required to boost relationships past a certain point. It makes me wonder if the following would work well:

1) Cap how much STR/LTR you can get from a specific action. For example, Chat might only be able to take you to 25/0 (side benefit: some of us might get to use the later Talk... options for the first time!). Friendly Hug might cap at 60/30. To gain a platonic friend, you'd need to Share Interests, Play, etc - Chat would -never- do it, since it would stop giving points at 25/0, and the passing of time would only take this to 25/25. To gain a Crush, you'd have to do more than Flirt/Charm, and to gain a Love, you'd have to do almost everything. :)

2) Change all interactions that currently succeed/fail based on STR/LTR to succeed/fail based on compatibility (likes/traits/chemistry for romance). ACR does this quite well for romantic actions based on an 'attractiveness' rating, so it's definitely possible. For example, Tickle might only require a compatibility rating of 10, while Friendly Hug requires a rating of 50. The exact stats and numbers to use would take a lot of tweaking/testing to decide. For added depth, things like mood (good mood = more accepting) and similar skill-levels (we're both Logical / we both hate Logic = more accepting) could be factored in to give additional ways to make two Sims more (or less) compatible through player actions. But the compatibility rating would determine the highest action a Sim would accept, determining the limits on their relationship.

As for Popularity/Romance Sims... well, life would get harder for them. :)  But a simple "What do I think of...?" action to give a clue to compatibility before spending too much time getting to know them would help. I'd think the best way to implement such an action would be to have it return text describing how much potential for growth remains in the relationship. Like if you can still gain many STR/LTR points before hitting the cap, your Sim might say, "I'd like to get to know X better." But as you approach the cap, the text might change to "I don't think there's much more to know about X." So Popularity/Romance Sims could see if there's a potential for Best Friends from a brief encounter (chatting etc), while it might take a date or more to know whether the Sim is a potential Crush/Love. It could add benefits to Woohoo Wants using ACR, since they could avoid Loves and stick to more casual affairs. :)

So STR/LTR would be the -reward- for successful actions, not the determiner of whether those actions succeed. Escalating actions would be required to escalate the relationship - no best buds from phone calls or lovers from flirting and pecks on the cheek. And the characteristics of the individual Sims would determine 'compatibility', making relationships unique, and gaining friends and lovers challenging and rewarding.

This logic unfortunately doesn't work, because if STR/LTR do nothing, then your sim is either implicitly friends or never will be.

Well, best buds from phone calls doesn't happen unless it's already been set, as phone calls grant 0 LTR gain. The PRIMARY factor in LTR gain, in truth, is "cooking". You can observe this in the Stories games: You can't cook LTR, so it's all but impossible to get unless you bludgeon away it repetitively or use the Shades. The ability to "cook" LTR, whether you want to or not, is basically why sims always end up 100/100 best friends. I suspect that if this were simply taken away, the game would get much harder. Whether or not I'll opt to make such a thing depends on its compatibility with existing products.

Actually, they wouldn't. If you discounted the "building" aspect of STR/LTR entirely, then friends/lovers/etc would effectively be preordained and predetermined.

STR/LTR would still unlock new interactions, and determines friend/crush/bestfriends/lover status. It would be a progress meter - it's currently both a progress meter and the determining factor in success, which is just loony logic.


True. But the phone call allowing STR to go to 100 is what allows the "cooking" to push LTR to 100. So to remove that result, you can either (a) Remove "cooking", or (b) remove the ability for phone calls to push STR to 100.


I thought of that as a solution as well, but it still wouldn't address the silliness of lower-tier interactions maxing out relationships and invalidating higher-tier actions. Why risk Caress if Charm never fails? Why is a friendly hug enough to keep your spouse madly in love with you?

Capping how high each action can raise your STR/LTR would handle that, and make removing "cooking" unnecesarry. If you want to keep your wife at 100/100, you may have to 'satisfy' her now and then. :)


Well, currently, it's predetermined that every relationship you put a tiny effort into (and most you don't) will be a raging success. In this system, some relationships will be successful, some will be doomed, and some will sit in-between.

As I said, some player-control could be achieved by factoring skill levels, chemistry and mood into the 'compatibility' numbers, since these are aspects that the player can modify:

"She likes hats? Gimme a hat, stat!"
"She loves Logic? I'd better play some chess!"
"Maybe I'd better wait to suggest a kiss until she's a bit less angry... or full platinum."

So the Sims' starting stats and Likes would a big factor, but those controllable aspects could be enough to push a "just friends" girl into a potential Lover.

Additionally, some randomness to interaction results could be added, so that borderline relationships could go either way, and would always be volatile. The result would still always trend towards the 'compatibility' number, but small random spikes in either direction would appear like spats or passion.

Of course, if one were to make a single Sim-relationship as volatile as the real thing, upon finishing the mod, the next step would likely be to reduce the numbers of friends/loves required by wants in the game. :) That said, I'd love to replace the tedium of grabbing 20 or 50 interchangable Sims and grinding out STR/LTR at no risk of failure, with something like 5 or 10 required relationships that involve searching for compatible Sims and hoping that your Chat leads to friendship or that she accepts that Flirt and it leads to love.

Squinge's fall out of love automatically when LTR is below 70 (http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=27551) should do.

Wonderful! Thank you Marhis.

Squinge has as reduced LTW mod like this that I am VERY fond of: http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=39950

I agree that "cooking" is one of the biggest problems.  What if interactions were divided into two categories: ones that raise STR and others that raise LTR?  For example, a chat can raise your STR, but does nothing for your LTR.  A friendly hug will raise LTR, but maybe not STR.  Telling a joke raises STR, a family kiss raises LTR.  Flirting raises STR, which will trigger a crush (and I think it should).  Light kisses, kisses on the hand raise STR, romantic kisses and make outs raise LTR.  Woohoo raises LTR.  Obviously those are just suggestions for the actual categories, but you get the idea.  Would that work? 

With cooking off then, your Sim would have to make meaningful interactions to raise the LTR. 

And inspired by recent events in my house, I would like to suggest if anyone makes this mod, there has to be autonomous arguing with your spouse when in a bad mood! ;)

And about that harder relationships mod over at MTS2, I'm not really noticing a big difference.  Just a few more bad conversations.  The one thing I am noticing though is that most of my Sims have too many common interests, so I need to change that up a bit.  So I also wonder if the bad conversations I'm noticing are a result of my varying their interests a little more??? 

Well,maybe it's time to tell something about my mod at MTS2.
1.Mod mostly oriented for using with fresh hoods where sims have not any relations yet,because I slow down almost all
first contact bonuses.
2.Interests Threshold changed something abuot 15%and now 550 of 1000(default lower value is 400)
3.About LTR"cooking"-redused about 30% and now each two days your sim get 3 not 5 LTR points.So "cooking"take much more time now.
4.Advertising for irritation interactions increased  that means that NPC can make it more often.
5.Required relations for irritations and fights changed something about 10%-so grouchy NPC sims get more chances to irritate instead to talk.
And finally this is only first little step in side "relations problem" and why I don't want to make something complex with STR is obvious conflicts with mods or projects based on STR (noinstantlove,ACR,InT..... etc.).So don't judge too strictly my work.I only tried to bring something a little new in game,because  my interest to this game begin to drop. :(

Never said I didn't like it ;)  I just mean that it's subtle.  I'm still using the mod so it must be okay :)

Definitely. :)


They all sound like good changes. They should help fix one of the issues discussed here: that relationships are too likely to start out positively. I'll definitely be using your mod the next time I play.

I'd also be interested to know your thoughts on this thread, and if your mod is a "first step", what's step #2? :)


I understand! I've quit playing the game many times. I can usually only go about a month before the lack of variety and challenge bores me. Hopefully I'll either find enough mods like yours (and some others here and elsewhere) to keep me playing longer, or I'll at least be smart enough not to uninstall this time - reinstalling hurts. :)

At first I'll hope that my mod will be really usefull for you. :)
Well,about this thread I can say that I'm glad to read about really important aspects of game.
About step 2 I think that something must be changed in Accept/Rejects section.Seem to me that good balance of accepts and
rejects can bring some changes in sims relations.Accepts and rejects must be more personality/character based.
Obviously very important aspect is mood.I saw in my game as sim in desperation mood started doind things that never did before.
So,I think about it and I'll try to find  mood-interactions links.
I should like to make something simple at first with BCON tunings,and if it not help to change something,than to try doing
something with BHAV and STR values.But in this case as I said above may be sure conflicts with other mods.
So,main problem is time problem,because all these"researches"take too many time and I'm not so awesome person in modding
as other moddingmonsters.And many things I still make ntuitive.
But can notice that TS2 is very stabile and tolerant to many stupid things that peoples can do with it.So,show must go on... :)
P.S. By the way I'm almost sure that you can try this http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=233274 alternative version*

Ok, I'm finding this more interesting.  I like that grouchy sims are more likely to irritate... would it also be possible to make advertising of those interactions mood based? (or... at least tweak it in the TEST bhav so that, if autonomous, grouchy sims Or sims in a bad mood... and maybe Not really shy or Not really lazy sims... meaning they should have outgoing/active >=4 or something like that, because really shy or really lazy sims might not irritate other people as much?)

Sims in a bad mood or aspiration failure should be more irritable, and have a tendency to want to irritate or fight other sims more.

Even if a sim is grouchy in general, if they are generally in a happy mood, I think they should be less likely to irritate or fight.


Ste

Finally I've posted finished(updated) version of harder rel.mod.Everybody who downloaded previious version ,please redownload:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=241232
 :)

I think just setting a cap on the LTR/STR, without getting into modifying all the interactions, would be enough to make the game significantly more interesting. Yes, it would just reset the limit, but it would require more effort to find sims to marry/befriend. You'd have to figure out if they'd be compatible or not ahead of time. and if you want a marriage based on genetics/appearance instead of chemistry/personality, it makes the game that much more challenging.