More realistic/difficult relationships?

[Farsight]

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

[elle.jae]

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.

[Sleepycat]

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

[jsalemi]

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

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

[Merope]

The readme for enemies accumulate is a little confusing...

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.

[Arina]

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.

[jsalemi]

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.

[Magicmoon]

The readme for enemies accumulate is a little confusing...

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. 

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.

[Farsight]

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.

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.

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?)

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.

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.

[Ennarys]

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.

[J. M. Pescado]

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.

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

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.

Doesn't this already happen?

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.

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!

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!).

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.

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!).

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.

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.

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

[Soylent Sim]

stuff

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.

[J. M. Pescado]

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.

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.

[Farsight]

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.

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

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.

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.

Doesn't this already happen?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!).

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.

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.

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!).

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

More to the point, PCSims might not be the platform you're happiest with.

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?

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

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.

not to mention that if a single sim is challenging you've made families significantly more so.

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.

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.

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...

[Soylent Sim]

Got your fantasy games right here.  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.)

If there's no challenge or risk of failure, it's a dollhouse.

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

[seventhson]

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... 

[MasterDinadan]

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.

[pixiejuice]

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.

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. 

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.

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.

-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.

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.

[Ennarys]

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)

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. 

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.

Me too.

[Skadi]

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. 

-Skadi

 

[Melanija]

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*

[pixiejuice]

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

[Farsight]

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.

[J. M. Pescado]

So STR/LTR would be the -reward- for successful actions, not the determiner of whether those actions succeed.

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

Escalating actions would be required to escalate the relationship - no best buds from phone calls or lovers from flirting and pecks on the cheek.

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.

And the characteristics of the individual Sims would determine 'compatibility', making relationships unique, and gaining friends and lovers challenging and rewarding.

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

[Farsight]

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

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.

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".

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 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.

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.

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

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.