Autonomous romance, townie generation

Purplebutterfly

So I wanted to request an option to "turn off" sims having lovebird or romantic interests being developed while playing other households in the game. My first sim couple is a household I seldom play now as I started playing with some other households, now I go in to play that household and the wife is having about five other romances going on in various stages of 'lovebirds' or romantic interest. In another household of married sims, the husband has the solemate aspiration and is solemates with his wife, so I play another household for a while and return to their household and the husband and wife both have lovebird relationships with other sims. Now I actually wouldn't mind if they made friends, but to have romances happen automatically when the household isn't played is not cool for my married sims. If I wanted to have affairs I could play that out myself. The automatic romances is ruining the fun for me.
Also, I would love an option to turn off townies being generated. I created enough sims for my game and the abundance of townies is annoying when I deleted a few and the game just adds more.

catloverplayer

And to add to this single sims don't even develop romantic or lovebird relationships when switching households just married sims. I think this should happen to single sims instead of married sims with the exception of married sims that are serial romantics of course.

Purplebutterfly

Agreed, it doesn't affect single sims at all, this kinda ruins the gameplay.

LokiSimsies

But that sounds like story progression, when sims do things on their own while not being played.

I thought there wasn't any story progression in this game?

/sarcasm

This is an ongoing issue and why I stopped rotating. @msphy brought this to the attention of the gurus during one of their recent chats and Graham responded that they are looking into it.

I'm not going to share my opinion on that other than to say I want control of my Sims and they should not be cheating unless I tell them to cheat.

catloverplayer

I would love for my single sims to meet sims and become romantically involved when I changed households. I'd love to switch back and see my single sim now has a lovebird relationship with another sim.

Purplebutterfly

> @LokiSimsies said:
> But that sounds like story progression, when sims do things on their own while not being played.
>
> I thought there wasn't any story progression in this game?
>
> /sarcasm
>
> This is an ongoing issue and why I stopped rotating. msphy brought this to the attention of the gurus during one of their recent chats and Graham responded that they are looking into it.
>
> I'm not going to share my opinion on that other than to say I want control of my Sims and they should not be cheating unless I tell them to cheat.

This is messing up my game play, so now while they are looking into it, all the married sims are cheating amongst themselves as well as townies, SMH!
I may have to start a new game with just one family to get some normalcy and return to cheatingville (my original saved game) from time to time...

[Deleted User]

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Jessa_Dakkar

Maybe they should have named Willow Creek, Peyton Place instead.

kimjo313

Wow, this game was so well tested . I am so glad to have paid $70 for A beta game. You are welcome EA.

KIM

Purplebutterfly

Yup, this is so bad that I dread checking the relationship status of the married sims households that I alternate playing from time to time.

catloverplayer

I don't switch households anymore because of this.

NatKingSim

I totally agree with you. It is frustrating.

MsPhy

It seems to me that rotational players were really not taken into consideration when the game was developed. I speculation that this is because it was virtually impossible to play rotationally in Sims 3, and not a lot of people on the current team harken back to Sims 2 days. I don't know, it's possible that rotational gameplay is not truly understood by the Powers that Be, and therefore it is not tested. Same with generational play. Of course, you could play many generations in Sims 3 (as in Sims 2), but in testing, did they take the time to test multiple generations? My guess is "probably not."

I'm not saying this to bash the team who created the game. I get the sense that the different aspects of game development are very compartmentalized, and I'm not sure there's anywhere that the big picture ever really comes together, not even in testing.

I love the game. I would love it more if these things could be fixed. I did bring up the autonomous romance problem in an SG thread, and was thanked and told it would be looked at. I (and others) also brought up problems that affect generational play, like culling. Some of that has been addressed in recent patches, but I haven't played enough generations since then to know if the problem there is truly solved. The SGs are well aware of how much generational players would like family trees again, and hopefully they are hearing the message that we want/need more extended family relationships, like aunts/uncles/cousins/step-family.

Anyway, for now I am playing a Legacy Challenge and enjoying it. However, I do hope to go back to rotational play when the legacy is done. I'm on generation 4. Really hoping that before generation 10, many (all?) of these things will be well-addressed.

[Deleted User]

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Purplebutterfly

> @catloverplayer said:
> I don't switch households anymore because of this.

Exactly, how I'm starting to feel, but that ruins my gameplay!

Purplebutterfly

@MsPhy, I thank you for addressing this previously and agree that this aspect of gameplay was not considered it seems. I felt like starting over and creating my own legacy challenge for myself and just ignore the rest and play one household, but I get bored lol. Anyway I'm hoping the developers have heard us and are diligently working to respond to our pleas with an update that fixes this going forward.

JA421

I hate this myself. I have a few good couples that I deem "the power couples." Up until last month, they were only faithful to each other until recently, now they both have two lovebirds that I can't get rid of (or find to delete in manage household.) I agree about a faithful trait. I will say that sometimes it is funny when they do cheat, but sometimes I don't want them to cheat. This type of trait, or additional feature, would be a huge help to us, SimGurus.

kaputtino

hey everyone, this should have been fixed with the last patch (27/10/16). I am wondering if anyone checked into it and saw if it the lovebird relationships stopped occuring out of nowhere? I am a rotational player too and I'm using a mod to stop this from happening. I only use 2 mods but it's enough to make my game crash from time to time. but I'm too afraid to play without it because I cant have that plum in my game

SheepyCakes

I was extremely frustrated by this also. Not only were my married couples building romances with other Sims, the relationship between the couple went down to literally nothing! This even still happens with a sims couple WHILE I AM PLAYING THEM. I have autonomy turned off, but that doesn't stop romantic interactions during chat (autonomous chat still continues even when autonomy is off, really frustrating). If I wanted my Sims to cheat I'd tell them to. Having them cheat totally beyond my control is ridiculous and game-breaking. I don't even bother trying to make couples anymore because I know they don't mean anything. The Sims will keep being romantic with others no matter what.

kaputtino

@SheepyCakes I also play with autonomy turned off, and yes, it's very annoying how they keep interacting with other sims randomly when I didn't tell them too. with the last patch, I noticed they are starting chats more often. however, I was lucky enough I guess because they never flirted with other sims while I was playing them. only when I returned to a previous household I'd spot the lovebird relationships. I am now dependent on two mods otherwise I can't play the way I like to. one to stop the lovebirds and another to stop relationship decay in my households when I'm not playing them. I think it's ridiculous how it decays to 0 with married sims, parents with their children and overall sims who live together. it doesn't make sense.

mentalwasteland

I was just playing with my married couple, both having just completed the soulmate aspiration with each other. I had them at a nightclub sitting down and talking. Suddenly, even though she had queued conversations, the wife stood up and walked off. I followed her to the bar where she had already ordered a drink (she'd already had two -- is there a hidden alcoholic trait?). I had her walk back to her husband, who had autonomously starting talking with some elder (he's a young adult) and gotten the romance bar 1/3 full already. What the heck!?!? I'm going to turn off automation too.

egwarhammer

With the qualification that some new San Myshuno EP interactions/objects/etc haven't been covered yet, for people who will mod their game, MC Command Center can help with both the Flirty romances, and any Population issues you're having.

UI Cheats can help with the Romance/Friendship issues if you're looking for a "smaller" mod than MC. Both work together, though, I have them installed here.

I have Autonomous Flirting disabled, but I've had 3 new Lovebird relationships pop up IN S. M. So there's something new they've added that MC hasn't taken into account yet. Next update will be a lot more supportive of new CL EP additions. It IS working fine at keeping those flirty things from happening in other hoods, it's only the new one with some issues.

Known bugs, for now don't set any Population range to 0... defaults are 33. 10 will work. 0 (closing the door) could cause your bin to go wild with generating sims, because that 0 is keeping it from fulfilling some filter... it keeps trying...

Related example: Gardener CAN'T be a YA, it has to be an Adult or Elder. I've seen my YA-heavy settings cause 5 new sims to be created for "gardener" but 4 were YA, and the last one, the only adult, is the one who actually got the job. The rest all had level 10 gardening, nice accidental bonus. (Some of them ended up being tagged later for restaurant worker jobs, BTW.)

Also, Occult Abduction Frequency is misbehaving, if you have it set for either High or Alien Invasion. Best to leave that on Normal till the next MC update, it's causing LastException files and sims resetting in beds once the Abduction time frame opens up (10pm default).

If you need help with MC, post here:

http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/837115/need-help-with-mc-command-center-ask-here#latest/

kaputtino

thanks, @egwarhammer. I'm aware that MCCC can solve this issue, I'll probably get it sometime soon... it just seems to have so much ground to cover the thread you recommended is really helpful though.