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Deeper Social Interactions
Wenzel
Posts: 75 Member
Hello community! Turns out I can actually post a new topic in this forum, so here it goes!
I could write pages and pages about why I feel the SIMS need a deeper social interaction system and about the difficulties to actually come up with such a system. However, I think it’s more practical to go straight in medias res.
Here are three interlocked systems that I have made up that I think would make the SIMS’s social gameplay more interesting. Even though they are utopical (or dystopical in case you don’t like them) maybe they are in some way interesting to read or even inspiring. Generally speaking, the systems presented here are meant to make every single sim unique not only in his moods (that's what traits are for) but also unique in the eyes of any other sim. This can only be achieved by adding aspects to sims that influence how they're perceived by other sims.
HABITUS SYSTEM
This system is supposed to give each sim a social profile and also individual preferences. I guess that this system would need to replace the abstract “charisma” skill. A person is hardly universally charismatic for everyone else. Charisma is relative to what we actually like or admire in other people. Also note that this system has some similarity with the “group”-idea from the “Get together” expansion. It’s just more universal, fluent, not confined to clubs and also more universal in its consequences (habitus affects every interaction with every other sim). So here is the concept:
Each sim has an individual set of characteristics that matters in social interaction, or, to be more precise, even in social perception. I call it habitus. Habitus includes external/perceptive aspects (gesture, way of talking, clothes, body) but also internal/attitude aspects (interests). For each aspect of habitus, there is a certain variety of habitus-manifestations. Please take a look at the end of this section for a list of habitus-types and manifestations. For example, the habitus “appearance” (think: body language, gesture, way of moving) includes manifestations such as “shy”, “elegant”, “brutish”, etc.
Each sim is born (or at least ages up) with an individual set of habitus-manifestations and also an individual set of habitus-preference vis-à-vis all habitus-manifestations (think of it as: which habitus does the sim love/hate in other sims?). For example, your sim could be a slightly skinny guy using slang language with a shy body language. Moreover, he happens to distaste all people who like or practise extreme sports but at the same time he loves techno music (cool example, huh?). This individual set of habitus-manifestations will have an influence on both your sim’s perception of other sims and the other sim’s perception of your own sim.
Of course sims should not be stuck with their "initial" habitus. Except for body (sport/eating balance) and clothing (shopping!) habitus, all kinds of habitus-manifestations can be acquired by “learning” them (also refer to the list at the end). This works like learning skills, only that learning a habitus is a long term effort and depends on social interactions more than on interactions with objects. Moreover, habitus-manifestations cannot be “levelled up”. A shy body language is a shy body language, it can't get any shyer. Sims can acquire several habitus-manifestations within any habitus-type. They can learn different roles and behaviours, so to speak.
Even though they can learn several habitus-manifestations, sims can only ever have ONE habitus-manifestation of each type active at any given time. By active, I mean: this is the habitus that other sims perceive and that affects social interactions. So, for example, depending on who you want to impress and the overall situation, your sim could either use his “shy" appearance-habitus or his “overly masculine" appearance-habitus, but not both at the same time. So, you, as the player, can actually adapt your sim (based on what manifestations he has "learned") to situations. However, I think there should be a cool-down or at least a penatly (long term "depression/stress" moodlet?) for switching habitus-manifestations (except for clothing) too often, as it means that the player forces his/her sim to switch roles too often and thereby act against his natural inclination. Don't make your sim schizophrenic! However, I think it would be interesting to define one "natural" habitus-manifestations. And if keeping non-natural habitus-manifestations active for too long, a sim could start gaining stress (negative moodlets) or automatically switch back to their natural habitus.
On habitus preference: Habitus preference tells you what a sim likes or dislikes in other sims. IMagine it this way: Each sim has a certain amount of tolerance/preference points that he/she can distribute over all available manifestations (sidenote: there might be intolerant or tolerant traits! Also, old people could "lose" some tolerance points). So, let’s say you can spread a maximum of 6 points on each manifestation: 0=hate, 3=neutral, 6= love. So, for example, if you want your sim to be snob who distates anyone who does not speak elegantly, then simply put 6 points on it and spread 0 points on all other ways of talking. Et voilà: your sim will now be enraged by all that scum who does not know how to express themselves! If your sim hates skinny people, put no tolerance points on the skinny body-manifestation. On the other hand, if your sim loves people who walk like Arnold Schwarzenegger, put maximum tolerance/preference points on the "overly male" appearance-habitus.
And this is how habitus comes into action: Depending on your sim’s habitus-tolerance/preference and the degree of exposure, your sim will get upset or, on the other hand, happy –maybe even romantically interested - if he/she is confronted by other sims with the respective active habitus-manifestation. The degree of exposure depends on the situation: perception-manifestations like body and appearance have an effect on sight (closeness), while others (interests) only come into play only if a conversation touches a certain topic.
So, if your sim is exposed to habitus-manifestations that he/she does not like, then (depending on her/his tolerance level) he/she might get negative moodlets. This resembles that the sim feels SOCIALLY (not bodily!) uncomfortable in the current situation. The waitor talks so slimy and looks ugly? On a bad day, this could make your sim's day even worse! It’s up to you as the player: can your sim still stand the situation? Can you evadeseeing and talking to the source of aversion (this means dropping out of the conversation with people you'd actually like to talk to!)? Do you escalate the situation? Apart from your own sim’s mood, habitus intolerance also affects friendship and romance. A sim should have a much harder time becoming friends with a sim that he simply doesn’t like! It’s quite obvious.
On the other hand, if exposed to a preferred habitus, your sim will get a positive moodlet, depending on the level of his/her preference and the level of exposure. In extreme cases, your sim might develop a strong romantic interest (see romance system). Also, a sim has a much easier time becoming friends with a sim that she/he likes. (Note though that ideally just because A likes B does not mean that B likes A as well).
The habitus-system gives many new conversation-options. Not only can you talk about “interests” which will reveal your partners’ habitus-manifestations and trigger habitus intolerances/preferences respectively, but also you should be able to find out the preferences of other sims. If you think about it, you could even try to find out another sim’s preferences by judging his/her reactions on other sims. E.g. you see that sim A always seems to be quite happy in company of sim B. It is sim B’s feminine body language or his/her casual way of talking? Watching social behaviour could be highly interesting and rewarding.
Also note that there is no universal hierarchy for habitus-manifestations. For example, some sims could be more attracted to "shy" body language and don't like (or are neutral for) an "overly masculine" appearance! And also remember that a sim is not defined by a single habitus-type, but by a set of many. This makes each sim unique.
LIST OF HABITUS AND MANIFESTATIONS
PERCEIVABLE: APPEARANCE (may be linked to walking style in the game!)
brutish – sloppy - shy/insecure – rigid - casual – elegant – strong/overly masculine – gracile/overly feminine
Acquire by talking to and/or watching = being close to sims with the respective (active!) manifestation/ training in the mirror/internet surfing / watching TV
PERCEIVABLE: WAY OF TALKING (different talking-sound-sets are not available in game, but never mind!)
slang – casual – robot/cold and clear – intellectual – business/show/service (can be used for jobs)– slimy - civic
Acquire by talking to and/or listening to sims with the respective (active!) manifestation / internet surfing / watching TV/reading books
PERCEIVABLE: CLOTHING
This is most complicated if we want to link it to the actual appearance of the sims in the game. But this link seems necessary. So, in order to keep it as simple as possible, I’d go for a price-tag (low, medium, high) for each available garment. The active manifestation is the average of all the garments worn by the sim.
low – medium – high
Change your manifestation by changing your clothes.
PERCEIVABLE: BODY (the manifestations can not be "learned" – they're fixed to the actual body shape of the sim)
manifestations reach from “fat / muscular” to “skinny / floppy”
Change your manifestation by eating more/less and sport
INTEREST: POLITICAL (habitus-based reactions triggered by “talk about politics” conversation-option)
conservative – liberal – communist – anarchic – apolitical – etc. (in case this does not fit MAXIS' happy pancake world, one could simply make up sim-world political parties: Ever heard of the Simolionists and the Simadicals?)
Acquire by talking with other sims about politics (regardless of their active politics-manifestation?)/watching news programmes /reading (is there a newspaper?) /internet surfing
INTEREST: SPORTS ("talk about sports" with other sims)
extreme sports – VIP sports (golf, polo) – mainstream sports (soccer, football, basketball) – outdoor (hiking, rafting, fishing, etc.) – motorsport – skating - athletics
Acquire by practising the sport (if available)/talking about it with other sims who are active on this manifestation/watching TV/internet surfing
INTEREST: HOBBY (“talk about hobbies” with other sims)
gardening – arts – nerd culture – literature - science – holiday – history – cooking – photography - etc.
Acquire by talking to sims who are active on the respective manifestation / doing hobby-related things (cooking, gardening, playing video games, painting, reading, etc.)/watching TV / internet surfing
INTEREST: MUSIC TASTE ("talk about music" with other sims)
indie – classic – techno – rock – jazz – blues – folk – etc.
Acquire by listening to the respective music / talking to sims who are active on the respective manifestation / playing an instrument
Note that for interest-habitus, I could imagine that sims need to keep "up to date" on their interest. If they don't read their special interest magazines and talk about their interests with others etc., they might loose the respective habitus-manifestation.
HYPOTHETICAL SITUATIONS/EXAMPLES OF PLAY
Just think of the situations that can evolve from this system, and also the depth of social interactions it would bring. Individual sims start to matter because: 1. Your sim will only like selected sims (based on his preferences). This is not only true for romantic interest (very high preference), but also for friendship-interest (your sim wants to find people of the same interest, and he might also want to be around charismatic people - people he/she wants to learn some new habitus from). 2. Because your sim likes only selected sims, he has an interest to make them like him/her back. This incites the player to develop tactical plans and forces him to balance his sims needs and feelings with social performance and pretention. Moreover, working on one's social appearance also costs time (balance this with job and freetime).
Here is just a hypothetical example of play:
Sim A sees sim B. A likes B very much: A likes B’s body- and appearance-manifestation, doesn’t really care about B’s clothes (neutral tolerance for B’s active clothing manifestation). Okay, A goes over to B to talk to him/her. B’s way of talking is slightly annoying (slight aversion), but hey, A talked about music and it turns out that B likes the same kind of music as A! Now, let’s assume that B also liked A (this question would only even arise if we had separated romance- and friendship-bars for both sims!) and they engage romantically. B is not quite as much a fan yet, but A finds out that B is totally into people who talk like intellectuals. So, A spends the next few weeks surfing the internet, reading books, perhaps even making friends with people who talk intellectually (we don’t ask whether they actually liked A too, or whether A was but a nuisance for them). Finally, A masters the art of speaking like an artsy Bohemien and B seems to fall in love and reciprocates A’s feelings.
Next stage: At some point, A is supposed to meet B’s family. It turns out that B’s father expects from anyone dating his child B to be a politically conscious citizen. He just doesn’t like people with no opinion. So, at dinner, he interacts with A and asks him about politics. It turns out that B’s father is himself actually actively apolitical (but well informed on all other political manifestations), yet he strongly dislikes people who are apolitical! Oh dear! Since A is apolitical, the conversation ends in a very unpleasant silence. B’s father is not only upset, but he now also dislikes A. For B's father, the evening ends with a strong "enraged" moodlet, and A is ashamed or sad. In future conversations, A will actively evade this topic ("talk about politics")*. Perhaps he also tries to pretend to be informed. He asks B about B’s father’s political preferences. It turns out that he kind of likes the Simadicals. So, A reads some newspapers, surfs the internet. After some time, A has learned to advocate simadicalist positions and B’s father is pleased. However, A only switches on his “simadicalist mode” when visiting B’s father - all his friends think politics is lame and he does not want to make a bad impression on them.
I’ll end the example here, but just think of all the strange, unpleasant, comical situations that could happen. What happens if B sees A talking to his “slang”-buddies in slang rather than like an intellectual? What happens if your sim happens to be the least attractive on the party? How to increase his/her chances with the ladies/gentlemen?
This system would give us plenty of things to do for our sims. Granted, the internet will be universally usefull (another realism aspect!
). But in general, the habitus-increase from surfing on the internet (or watching TV, etc.) should be lower than the increase from actual interaction with other (selected!) sims. So, by watching out for sims with the same habitus, or for those who have a habitus we want to learn, this system would make certain friendships more “usefull” than others. Simply because there are some sims who are more likeable and/or interesting for your sim than others. Thus our interest in other sims is more concrete and failures and successes in interaction will start to matter. And we would also need to think about ways to make the other sim like us.
*With the actual content of conversations gaining importance, this makes me think about some kind of rhetorical skill which lets you talk about topics (and thereby trigger interest-habitus-effects) against some other sim's will. So there would be a kind of social battle whether the conversation touches on the interest-habitus-related topic or not, which is decided by the rhetorical skill of the "pro" topic and "anti" topic party. This, in turn, lets sims be actively mean against someone else. E.g. you know that the person A is interested in (B) has a strong aversion against a certain interest-manifestation of A. Knowing this, you can actively bring up the respective habitus in the conversation. If you succeed, B's opinion of A will suffer. This would also make great use of the group-conversation in SIMS 4.
ROMANCE SYSTEM
Minor idea: Depression?
If a sim is unhappy with his/her life, he/she could fall into a depression. This would be handled like a sickness, it's not but another long-term moodlet.
The chance for your sim to suffer a depression increases by:
Depressions last very long and need to be actively tackled in order to get rid of them. I'm not sure about the effects. Depressive sims could be forbidden to do any creative, funny or in general just active tasks, their job performance suffers as well. Or at least give their comfort-desire a multiplier of x10. This should bind them to the couch, and they will only get up to make microwave food. Also, talking to a depressed sim might give the conversation-partner unhappy moodlets (in order to cheer up a depressed sim, you need to be confident and happy yourself to balance out the unhappy moods!). However, talking with a depressed sim should be the only way to tackle the depression. Depressed sims would need actual help by other sims. Perhaps taking a vacation could also be a means against a depression.
I could write pages and pages about why I feel the SIMS need a deeper social interaction system and about the difficulties to actually come up with such a system. However, I think it’s more practical to go straight in medias res.
Here are three interlocked systems that I have made up that I think would make the SIMS’s social gameplay more interesting. Even though they are utopical (or dystopical in case you don’t like them) maybe they are in some way interesting to read or even inspiring. Generally speaking, the systems presented here are meant to make every single sim unique not only in his moods (that's what traits are for) but also unique in the eyes of any other sim. This can only be achieved by adding aspects to sims that influence how they're perceived by other sims.
HABITUS SYSTEM
This system is supposed to give each sim a social profile and also individual preferences. I guess that this system would need to replace the abstract “charisma” skill. A person is hardly universally charismatic for everyone else. Charisma is relative to what we actually like or admire in other people. Also note that this system has some similarity with the “group”-idea from the “Get together” expansion. It’s just more universal, fluent, not confined to clubs and also more universal in its consequences (habitus affects every interaction with every other sim). So here is the concept:
Each sim has an individual set of characteristics that matters in social interaction, or, to be more precise, even in social perception. I call it habitus. Habitus includes external/perceptive aspects (gesture, way of talking, clothes, body) but also internal/attitude aspects (interests). For each aspect of habitus, there is a certain variety of habitus-manifestations. Please take a look at the end of this section for a list of habitus-types and manifestations. For example, the habitus “appearance” (think: body language, gesture, way of moving) includes manifestations such as “shy”, “elegant”, “brutish”, etc.
Each sim is born (or at least ages up) with an individual set of habitus-manifestations and also an individual set of habitus-preference vis-à-vis all habitus-manifestations (think of it as: which habitus does the sim love/hate in other sims?). For example, your sim could be a slightly skinny guy using slang language with a shy body language. Moreover, he happens to distaste all people who like or practise extreme sports but at the same time he loves techno music (cool example, huh?). This individual set of habitus-manifestations will have an influence on both your sim’s perception of other sims and the other sim’s perception of your own sim.
Of course sims should not be stuck with their "initial" habitus. Except for body (sport/eating balance) and clothing (shopping!) habitus, all kinds of habitus-manifestations can be acquired by “learning” them (also refer to the list at the end). This works like learning skills, only that learning a habitus is a long term effort and depends on social interactions more than on interactions with objects. Moreover, habitus-manifestations cannot be “levelled up”. A shy body language is a shy body language, it can't get any shyer. Sims can acquire several habitus-manifestations within any habitus-type. They can learn different roles and behaviours, so to speak.
Even though they can learn several habitus-manifestations, sims can only ever have ONE habitus-manifestation of each type active at any given time. By active, I mean: this is the habitus that other sims perceive and that affects social interactions. So, for example, depending on who you want to impress and the overall situation, your sim could either use his “shy" appearance-habitus or his “overly masculine" appearance-habitus, but not both at the same time. So, you, as the player, can actually adapt your sim (based on what manifestations he has "learned") to situations. However, I think there should be a cool-down or at least a penatly (long term "depression/stress" moodlet?) for switching habitus-manifestations (except for clothing) too often, as it means that the player forces his/her sim to switch roles too often and thereby act against his natural inclination. Don't make your sim schizophrenic! However, I think it would be interesting to define one "natural" habitus-manifestations. And if keeping non-natural habitus-manifestations active for too long, a sim could start gaining stress (negative moodlets) or automatically switch back to their natural habitus.
On habitus preference: Habitus preference tells you what a sim likes or dislikes in other sims. IMagine it this way: Each sim has a certain amount of tolerance/preference points that he/she can distribute over all available manifestations (sidenote: there might be intolerant or tolerant traits! Also, old people could "lose" some tolerance points). So, let’s say you can spread a maximum of 6 points on each manifestation: 0=hate, 3=neutral, 6= love. So, for example, if you want your sim to be snob who distates anyone who does not speak elegantly, then simply put 6 points on it and spread 0 points on all other ways of talking. Et voilà: your sim will now be enraged by all that scum who does not know how to express themselves! If your sim hates skinny people, put no tolerance points on the skinny body-manifestation. On the other hand, if your sim loves people who walk like Arnold Schwarzenegger, put maximum tolerance/preference points on the "overly male" appearance-habitus.
And this is how habitus comes into action: Depending on your sim’s habitus-tolerance/preference and the degree of exposure, your sim will get upset or, on the other hand, happy –maybe even romantically interested - if he/she is confronted by other sims with the respective active habitus-manifestation. The degree of exposure depends on the situation: perception-manifestations like body and appearance have an effect on sight (closeness), while others (interests) only come into play only if a conversation touches a certain topic.
So, if your sim is exposed to habitus-manifestations that he/she does not like, then (depending on her/his tolerance level) he/she might get negative moodlets. This resembles that the sim feels SOCIALLY (not bodily!) uncomfortable in the current situation. The waitor talks so slimy and looks ugly? On a bad day, this could make your sim's day even worse! It’s up to you as the player: can your sim still stand the situation? Can you evadeseeing and talking to the source of aversion (this means dropping out of the conversation with people you'd actually like to talk to!)? Do you escalate the situation? Apart from your own sim’s mood, habitus intolerance also affects friendship and romance. A sim should have a much harder time becoming friends with a sim that he simply doesn’t like! It’s quite obvious.
On the other hand, if exposed to a preferred habitus, your sim will get a positive moodlet, depending on the level of his/her preference and the level of exposure. In extreme cases, your sim might develop a strong romantic interest (see romance system). Also, a sim has a much easier time becoming friends with a sim that she/he likes. (Note though that ideally just because A likes B does not mean that B likes A as well).
The habitus-system gives many new conversation-options. Not only can you talk about “interests” which will reveal your partners’ habitus-manifestations and trigger habitus intolerances/preferences respectively, but also you should be able to find out the preferences of other sims. If you think about it, you could even try to find out another sim’s preferences by judging his/her reactions on other sims. E.g. you see that sim A always seems to be quite happy in company of sim B. It is sim B’s feminine body language or his/her casual way of talking? Watching social behaviour could be highly interesting and rewarding.
Also note that there is no universal hierarchy for habitus-manifestations. For example, some sims could be more attracted to "shy" body language and don't like (or are neutral for) an "overly masculine" appearance! And also remember that a sim is not defined by a single habitus-type, but by a set of many. This makes each sim unique.
LIST OF HABITUS AND MANIFESTATIONS
PERCEIVABLE: APPEARANCE (may be linked to walking style in the game!)
brutish – sloppy - shy/insecure – rigid - casual – elegant – strong/overly masculine – gracile/overly feminine
Acquire by talking to and/or watching = being close to sims with the respective (active!) manifestation/ training in the mirror/internet surfing / watching TV
PERCEIVABLE: WAY OF TALKING (different talking-sound-sets are not available in game, but never mind!)
slang – casual – robot/cold and clear – intellectual – business/show/service (can be used for jobs)– slimy - civic
Acquire by talking to and/or listening to sims with the respective (active!) manifestation / internet surfing / watching TV/reading books
PERCEIVABLE: CLOTHING
This is most complicated if we want to link it to the actual appearance of the sims in the game. But this link seems necessary. So, in order to keep it as simple as possible, I’d go for a price-tag (low, medium, high) for each available garment. The active manifestation is the average of all the garments worn by the sim.
low – medium – high
Change your manifestation by changing your clothes.
PERCEIVABLE: BODY (the manifestations can not be "learned" – they're fixed to the actual body shape of the sim)
manifestations reach from “fat / muscular” to “skinny / floppy”
Change your manifestation by eating more/less and sport
INTEREST: POLITICAL (habitus-based reactions triggered by “talk about politics” conversation-option)
conservative – liberal – communist – anarchic – apolitical – etc. (in case this does not fit MAXIS' happy pancake world, one could simply make up sim-world political parties: Ever heard of the Simolionists and the Simadicals?)
Acquire by talking with other sims about politics (regardless of their active politics-manifestation?)/watching news programmes /reading (is there a newspaper?) /internet surfing
INTEREST: SPORTS ("talk about sports" with other sims)
extreme sports – VIP sports (golf, polo) – mainstream sports (soccer, football, basketball) – outdoor (hiking, rafting, fishing, etc.) – motorsport – skating - athletics
Acquire by practising the sport (if available)/talking about it with other sims who are active on this manifestation/watching TV/internet surfing
INTEREST: HOBBY (“talk about hobbies” with other sims)
gardening – arts – nerd culture – literature - science – holiday – history – cooking – photography - etc.
Acquire by talking to sims who are active on the respective manifestation / doing hobby-related things (cooking, gardening, playing video games, painting, reading, etc.)/watching TV / internet surfing
INTEREST: MUSIC TASTE ("talk about music" with other sims)
indie – classic – techno – rock – jazz – blues – folk – etc.
Acquire by listening to the respective music / talking to sims who are active on the respective manifestation / playing an instrument
Note that for interest-habitus, I could imagine that sims need to keep "up to date" on their interest. If they don't read their special interest magazines and talk about their interests with others etc., they might loose the respective habitus-manifestation.
HYPOTHETICAL SITUATIONS/EXAMPLES OF PLAY
Just think of the situations that can evolve from this system, and also the depth of social interactions it would bring. Individual sims start to matter because: 1. Your sim will only like selected sims (based on his preferences). This is not only true for romantic interest (very high preference), but also for friendship-interest (your sim wants to find people of the same interest, and he might also want to be around charismatic people - people he/she wants to learn some new habitus from). 2. Because your sim likes only selected sims, he has an interest to make them like him/her back. This incites the player to develop tactical plans and forces him to balance his sims needs and feelings with social performance and pretention. Moreover, working on one's social appearance also costs time (balance this with job and freetime).
Here is just a hypothetical example of play:
Sim A sees sim B. A likes B very much: A likes B’s body- and appearance-manifestation, doesn’t really care about B’s clothes (neutral tolerance for B’s active clothing manifestation). Okay, A goes over to B to talk to him/her. B’s way of talking is slightly annoying (slight aversion), but hey, A talked about music and it turns out that B likes the same kind of music as A! Now, let’s assume that B also liked A (this question would only even arise if we had separated romance- and friendship-bars for both sims!) and they engage romantically. B is not quite as much a fan yet, but A finds out that B is totally into people who talk like intellectuals. So, A spends the next few weeks surfing the internet, reading books, perhaps even making friends with people who talk intellectually (we don’t ask whether they actually liked A too, or whether A was but a nuisance for them). Finally, A masters the art of speaking like an artsy Bohemien and B seems to fall in love and reciprocates A’s feelings.
Next stage: At some point, A is supposed to meet B’s family. It turns out that B’s father expects from anyone dating his child B to be a politically conscious citizen. He just doesn’t like people with no opinion. So, at dinner, he interacts with A and asks him about politics. It turns out that B’s father is himself actually actively apolitical (but well informed on all other political manifestations), yet he strongly dislikes people who are apolitical! Oh dear! Since A is apolitical, the conversation ends in a very unpleasant silence. B’s father is not only upset, but he now also dislikes A. For B's father, the evening ends with a strong "enraged" moodlet, and A is ashamed or sad. In future conversations, A will actively evade this topic ("talk about politics")*. Perhaps he also tries to pretend to be informed. He asks B about B’s father’s political preferences. It turns out that he kind of likes the Simadicals. So, A reads some newspapers, surfs the internet. After some time, A has learned to advocate simadicalist positions and B’s father is pleased. However, A only switches on his “simadicalist mode” when visiting B’s father - all his friends think politics is lame and he does not want to make a bad impression on them.
I’ll end the example here, but just think of all the strange, unpleasant, comical situations that could happen. What happens if B sees A talking to his “slang”-buddies in slang rather than like an intellectual? What happens if your sim happens to be the least attractive on the party? How to increase his/her chances with the ladies/gentlemen?
This system would give us plenty of things to do for our sims. Granted, the internet will be universally usefull (another realism aspect!
). But in general, the habitus-increase from surfing on the internet (or watching TV, etc.) should be lower than the increase from actual interaction with other (selected!) sims. So, by watching out for sims with the same habitus, or for those who have a habitus we want to learn, this system would make certain friendships more “usefull” than others. Simply because there are some sims who are more likeable and/or interesting for your sim than others. Thus our interest in other sims is more concrete and failures and successes in interaction will start to matter. And we would also need to think about ways to make the other sim like us.*With the actual content of conversations gaining importance, this makes me think about some kind of rhetorical skill which lets you talk about topics (and thereby trigger interest-habitus-effects) against some other sim's will. So there would be a kind of social battle whether the conversation touches on the interest-habitus-related topic or not, which is decided by the rhetorical skill of the "pro" topic and "anti" topic party. This, in turn, lets sims be actively mean against someone else. E.g. you know that the person A is interested in (B) has a strong aversion against a certain interest-manifestation of A. Knowing this, you can actively bring up the respective habitus in the conversation. If you succeed, B's opinion of A will suffer. This would also make great use of the group-conversation in SIMS 4.
ROMANCE SYSTEM
Romantic relationship bars should not be shared by two sims any more. Sim A might like sim B a lot, but it’s totally possible that sim B hates sim A. The perception of a relationship is not shared but individual for each sim.
The romantic relationship bar represents two things: 1. romantic interest, 2. romantic fulfilment. The extent of romantic interest is represented by an “unfilled” bar. The longer it is, the more in love your sim is. The extent of romantic fulfilment is represented by a “filled” bar (filling up the romantic interest bar). The longer it is (in relation to the interest bar), the happier (and two-sided) a romantic relation is.
Romantic interest in a sim is automatically determined the first time two sims meet. A major, player-influenced factor should be the habitus-system described above. It would include the first impression (appearance, way of talking, clothing, body) and getting to know each other (habitus-interests). But there should also be a random factor (call it zodiac, chemistry, whatever).
Romantic interest slowly fades over time if it remains unfulfilled (or if the active habitus of the “interesting” sim are changed for the worse).
If a sim already has a high romantic interest in a sim, his romantic interest in other sims is somewhat reduced.
Romantic fulfilment is generated by positively interacting with a romantically interesting sim. Obviously some interactions bring more fulfilment than others (being close to your love = very low fulfilment; talking to your love = medium fulfilment; kissing your love = very high fulfilment). It is reduced by negative interactions with a romantically interesting sim. Again, some interactions are more “destructive” than others. Moreover, seeing your love romantically interact with other sims (“cheating”) severely reduces fulfilment.
Romantic happiness is a state in which your sim has a high and fulfilled romantic interest in other sims. Romantic happiness strongly reinforces positive moodlets and makes sims bear their otherwise potentially stressfull lifes (e.g. switching habitus very often).
Love-sickness is a state in which your sim has a high but unfulfilled romantic interest in other sims. Being love-sick increases stress, gives strong negative moodlets and might even lead to depression. As described above, romantic interest (and thus also love-sickness) slowly fades over time if it stays unfulfilled.
The romantic relationship bar represents two things: 1. romantic interest, 2. romantic fulfilment. The extent of romantic interest is represented by an “unfilled” bar. The longer it is, the more in love your sim is. The extent of romantic fulfilment is represented by a “filled” bar (filling up the romantic interest bar). The longer it is (in relation to the interest bar), the happier (and two-sided) a romantic relation is.
Romantic interest in a sim is automatically determined the first time two sims meet. A major, player-influenced factor should be the habitus-system described above. It would include the first impression (appearance, way of talking, clothing, body) and getting to know each other (habitus-interests). But there should also be a random factor (call it zodiac, chemistry, whatever).
Romantic interest slowly fades over time if it remains unfulfilled (or if the active habitus of the “interesting” sim are changed for the worse).
If a sim already has a high romantic interest in a sim, his romantic interest in other sims is somewhat reduced.
Romantic fulfilment is generated by positively interacting with a romantically interesting sim. Obviously some interactions bring more fulfilment than others (being close to your love = very low fulfilment; talking to your love = medium fulfilment; kissing your love = very high fulfilment). It is reduced by negative interactions with a romantically interesting sim. Again, some interactions are more “destructive” than others. Moreover, seeing your love romantically interact with other sims (“cheating”) severely reduces fulfilment.
Romantic happiness is a state in which your sim has a high and fulfilled romantic interest in other sims. Romantic happiness strongly reinforces positive moodlets and makes sims bear their otherwise potentially stressfull lifes (e.g. switching habitus very often).
Love-sickness is a state in which your sim has a high but unfulfilled romantic interest in other sims. Being love-sick increases stress, gives strong negative moodlets and might even lead to depression. As described above, romantic interest (and thus also love-sickness) slowly fades over time if it stays unfulfilled.
Minor idea: Depression?
If a sim is unhappy with his/her life, he/she could fall into a depression. This would be handled like a sickness, it's not but another long-term moodlet.
The chance for your sim to suffer a depression increases by:
- ignoring/not progressing a sim’s aspiration for a long time
- love-sickness (see romance system)
- no success in job (bad performance, no promotion) (stronger influence if ambitious trait)
- being in an unhappy mood for longer periods of time (bad moodlet-management by the player)
- changing a sim’s habitus too often (see habitus-system)
- ignoring a sim’s whiffs (the small speech-bubble-desires) – rather small effect
Depressions last very long and need to be actively tackled in order to get rid of them. I'm not sure about the effects. Depressive sims could be forbidden to do any creative, funny or in general just active tasks, their job performance suffers as well. Or at least give their comfort-desire a multiplier of x10. This should bind them to the couch, and they will only get up to make microwave food. Also, talking to a depressed sim might give the conversation-partner unhappy moodlets (in order to cheer up a depressed sim, you need to be confident and happy yourself to balance out the unhappy moods!). However, talking with a depressed sim should be the only way to tackle the depression. Depressed sims would need actual help by other sims. Perhaps taking a vacation could also be a means against a depression.
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Comments
INTEREST: $$$ ("talk about §§§" with other sims)
$$$ is bound to the actual fortune of the sim/household: very poor - poor - middle - rich - very rich (concrete thresholds are open for debate)
To change your sim's $$$-"habitus", make him/her richer.
I personally don't think the game needs to be *that* serious. Howeverrr, I do agree that the social aspect needs to be spruced up a little bit. But simply with a functional attraction system, functional likes/dislikes system, and a functional memory system.
A Likes/Dislikes system would be a perfect addition to TS4. The effects of Likes and Dislikes would come in handy, and create some interesting moments. The ideas from this thread could have a role in the attraction system.
So, by a functional like/dislike or attraction system, you mean that each sim is given a set of "characteristics" and "preference" (for characteristics in others)? That is exactly the premise of the habitus-system. It just seems so complex because several questions come with this seemingly simple base idea:
1. Number of characteristics? The suggested amount of characteristics is pretty large. You just need a certain amount of characteristics if you want to make each sim unique in the eyes of others.
2. Types of characteristics? There are two base types of characteristics: looks ("perception") and inner values ("interest"). They differ in how they are "revealed" (by spatial proximity=visual perception vs. in conversation) to and trigger like/dislike reactions of other sims. I think it's really necessary to keep both types.
3. Permanency of characteristics? Are all characteristics permanent? If not, how can they be changed? Admittedly, the suggested system gets quite intricate here, talking about the stress of playing too many roles, developing an interest for selected circles of friends to learn from (in addition/apart from the friends you like because they're likable), etc. I do think that the social surrounding of a sim should have an influence on his/her characteristics or habitus.
4. Effects of perceived characteristics? I kept this pretty simple in the habitus-suggestion.
What would a "memory system" do?
- How would it work with autonomy ?
- How would it work in a group setting ? (with multiple Sims controlled by the player)
- How would it work with a Sims population, which is far smaller than a real-life population ?
Your suggestion seems more fitting for a social MMO, with an avatar, than for a Sims game.
I'm sure all of that holds like, a good amount of relevancy in a game that was built for something a lot more serious than the sims? Like an authentic build of inner values and decision making and interests and all that good stuff, I just don't think this game is the place for it?? Taking a look at just an individual sim itself, realistically (meaning NOT in a perfect world) and looking at the game as is.. sims aren't meant to be taken as seriously as the levels you're putting them on with, and I completely understand your vision for higher levels of social authenticity, and I'm not going to point out examples in your concept because I just literally don't feel like it? But just know I completely understood your concept and I seriously applaud you for even putting at that together into a functional idea, I'm just saying I don't think the sims is the place for it..?
Sims are wacky, silly, unpredictable glitchy little characters. It's just how the game is, I don't think it is, or should ever be an exact replication of realistic social life. It's just not that deep of a game, you know? Never to the point that sims are arguing at the dining room table over which Beetles album is the best based on their personal habitus development and how it's affected them as a person along the course of their life..
NOW, where I will meet you in the middle at is saying that the game could definitely do with a few hints of more sim personalization which I mentioned a lil bit above in 3 areas. Annnd I'll drop each one below with a example of what I mean. All of which have been in previous sim games to SOME extent, but aren't in the current rendition and I definitely feel like this is the time the game could benefit from it the most.
This is primarily based on romantic interaction. Simple enough to explain because Sims 2 did an okay job at delivering this feature. At the start of creating your sim you'll pick a few things your sim is attracted to from a list. (I would suggest they implement 2 physical traits, 2 mental based traits).
Same goes for the function above but just in a different sense, this one being just general interests. This one I believe was introduced in Sims 3? Favorite colors, food, music type? Yeah, this was a great feature that I believe could be tweaked to be a little better by adding dislikes, because I don't think the game implemented that for just general interests, but I do know TS2 implemented it for their attraction system. Anyway, at the start of the game, you pick from a few categories. Not sure what the genres would be but let's just say it's Activities, Food, and Music. I make a sim that likes Creative Activites, Dislikes physical. Likes Salads, hates Pub Food, etc. You start your game, boom, that's enough right there to make an interesting sim with interesting situations, because much like the do's & don'ts system that was introduced with clubs in Get Together, they would be more inclined to do what they wan't and stay away from what they don't. Say you're having a family dinner and invite a sim that HATES meaty foods. Everyone sits for a meal but the sim that hates meaty foods? Starts doin' all that squirmy uncomfortable stuff sims do when something tastes gross. "Sorry, just not into eating meat." That creates a personal distinction between sims without it being all complicated, it's basically just in in-game filter of activities.
This also was introduced in sims 2. And I'm actually not sure how it functioned and this so far is the only sorta more in-depth, complicated'ish thing on this list, but the concept was simple. Sims remember what happened to them and it basically just became an inventory of their life. They loss their job? It became a memory. Had a baby? Memory. Moved as a child? Memory. Moved as an adult? Memory. And I'll attatch a quick peek at how it looked below if you aren't familiar with it.
Now there are two ways that this could benefit the game. The first one being, that in this rendition of the game, sims have actual "emotions" even though they don't really hold any weight . This could work really well with that feature, seeing as certain memories could now hold certain emotional buffs depending on what they are. Lost a loved one? That would probably register as a Sad memory. So eveeery now and then your sims would think of that and grant a sad moodlet. This would build each sim personally because all sims would be affected by only things THEY experienced. Not everyone moved when they were young, and not everyone lost a pet, not everyone has had their first kiss or woohoo yet. So this introduced a more personal touch to each sim while stillll keeping it relatively simple. Because honestly, this feature is already in TS4, it's just a little overlooked because they did it in a really dumb way. You know if you take screenshots, you can go into your sim photo gallery and set it as a memory and set what kind of memory it is and it just takes so much work it's just literally stupid. The second way this can affect the game is by taking this feature from personal development to social development meaning, A.) sims remember which sims are in memories with them and this affects their relationship socially with that sim. Example: I lost a fight to Bella Goth, kinda scared of fighting Bella again *tense moodlet around Bella Goth*
And B.) Getting to know other sims becomes more personal (which I'm sure is a feature you'd like). Example: I click to Get To Know another sim. I learn that they were once romantic with Bob Pancake so I know as a player, they might still get a lil flirty around Bob, and that affects my game too, all while simply just keeping memories.
Again, this is just my personal opinion on the game and a couple features I would like to see doesn't mean I'm speaking for everyone. But I think the addition of these would take the game to another level while keeping it simple & fun.
However I guess the habitual system is too much specific and closed in it. Maybe something similar to the system in TS2 comes to be handy in terms of how your sims behave themselves in such conversations.
Thanks for reading! I think it's a tightrope walk for the SIMS to feature a social system that is complex and concrete enough to give players meaningfull and interesting social interaction that enables us to play tactically, yet at the same time abstract enough to allow room for freedom and imagination and allow the AI to deal with it in a convincing manner. I don't see why the suggested system (which sounds more complicated if you have to describe it with words than by showing hypothetical screenshots) would be unsuitable for a SIMS game. Admittedly, it would shift the focus away from very concrete and short-term bodily needs towards more abstract, long-term social needs, but I don't think that this would be a bad thing. There are also some voices on the forum who share the feeling that the sims in S4 feel very bland, without any character, and that they're all interchangable. And it's simply true. Other sims in S4 are just self-moving objects that you can use to talk to (to get new moodlets for your sim) and that have a chance of failure.
That being said, you bring up important points. Though I have to say that I'm not up to the task of any kind of AI-programming and in general, I don't know what is possible and what isn't. So take this as a little excuse. Here are just some amateurish considerations:
AUTONOMY
AI-controlled absent sims ("progression")
Since the base game lacks any kind of progression, I'm not feeling a great need to achieve any better. However, if I was to design an abstract progression algorythm for habitus, I'd go for something like this:
Sims have acquired a number of habitus-manifestations (in each type of habitus! e.g. appearance, political interest, etc.) according to their age:
childen: 1
teenager: 1-2
young adult: 2-3
adult: 2-3
elderly: 2
At the same time, each sim's tolerance points are spread randomly over all habitus manifestations. However, there should be a strong weight towards "neutral" (3 points), with a few discordant extreme values that define each sim's character - some traits could give you more extreme values (neurotic? intolerant? asocial?). It also would be nice to have a differentiation by age, whereby the amount of tolerance points available decreases from childhood on, so that children have no social reservations at all, whereas old people tend to get grumpy very easily.
Then you'd need to define what kind of habitus-manifestations a sim learns when he/she ages up. The base chance would be random. But certain aspects should be a factor: Sims might be more likely to take up habitus from people living on their lot (esp. parents), or, generally speaking, from their friends (good relations). The selection of friends in general should be a function of compatible habitus ("cliques").
AI-controlled present sims
AI-controlled sims that enter a lot choose one of their available habitus on a random basis. And they'll stay with that habitus while they're on the lot. There could be a chance for sims to change habitus (especially back to their "natural/initial" habitus) while they're on the lot under special circumstances (extreme moods). This could make for some interesting situations. E.g. seeing his husband cheat on her, lady X cannot stay in her role any more. Instead of talking elegantly, she suddenly speaks casually. She's broken. How will her friends react to her sudden change of habitus?
As for acquiring habitus: It generally goes on the fly. With some exceptions (like reading special interest magazines), sims learn new habitus while doing other stuff, especially by social interaction. Most of the time, in order to acquire a new habitus, you need to be around the "right" people for longer periods of time. So I don't see the need to alter the existing AI-routines here.
GROUPS
AI-attitudes
I think it would be necessary for each sim to develop a certain AI-attitude/behaviour towards other sims. Based on these attitude-"flags", the AI-controlled sims would then try to act accordingly:
Developing AI-attitudes is a complex matter though, and maybe we would even need some kind of "memory" for our sims here. The base classification of other sims would be the perception of the other sim's habitus. So, sims who our sim doesn't like lean towards the enemy or evade attitudes (could be based on traits like: shy?), sims our sim likes lean towards friendly or love. Apart from habitus-perception, interactions should also play a role. I might not like that guy, but if he behaves okay, I'm not going to confront him in a rude way.
Of course, changes in habitus (or revealing positive aspects of habitus in conversations) and preferences can alter attitudes.
*Integrating moodlets into this would require to make these AI-attitudes obligatory even for player-controlled sims. So that if a player engages in a conversation in which a sim takes part that our sim would like to "evade", our sim would still get the "shy" moodlet.
POPULATION-SIZE
I agree though that sims with extreme preferences will have a hard time and will cause trouble anywhere they go (lots of sims will be flagged as their enemies). But I'd be okay with that. Extreme characters cause extreme reactions. If you don't want extremes, aim for a more balanced attribution of tolerance-points (so that you get neutral for most habitus-manifestations).
A short point about conversations
Moreover, I've added an additional idea about evading or forcing topics. Habitus (in)tolerances of the "interest" type are only triggered by actively talking about them (interaction "talk about ..."). So, touching certain topics can really change the course of a conversation as some topics might enrage or delight other sims. Therefore, knowing about other sim's (in)tolerances is a vital tactical information and it would be great if topics would be "suggested" before they're actually brought up. Any sim taking part in a conversation could agree or disagree to a suggested topic. The majority of "votes" (modified by rhetorical skill) decides if a topic is brought up (and triggers the respective (in)tolerances) or not. The enemy- and love-AI-attitudes described are meant to use this system in order to hurt opponents and keep beloved ones happy.
This is just ... a lot!
I've skipped SIMS 2 &3, so I didn't know any of this stuff.
So it seems to me that the attraction system was a simple form of my habitus-system (with very few types and manifestations in my language). And it only worked for romantic relationships.
My criqitue for the like/dislike system would be that it seems that it was based on interactions with certain objects, rather than with other sims? So, even though it does give sims more character, it does not make social interaction any deeper? There is no social aspect in it? The habitus system, on the other hand, is meant to make your sim like/dislike people (and thus make them unique in your sim's eyes), not things.
The memory system was really nice! I really like it. However, the same critique as for the like/dislike system applies. Its "social" aspect is rather small.
...? You say it's a lot, then you say it's not enough. Unless you were just trying at a ha-ha funny moment. Then ha, nice, v funny.
Anyway, the ~*simplicity*~ of the idea is the point of the idea. The sims isn't meant to be complicated. But agaaain, to each their own.
Seems as if my funny interaction failed. I guess I should rather work on my comedy skill instead of trolling the forums all the time.
Anyway. I was not critizising the SIMS' 2 and 3 systems because of their simplicity. But rather because (with the exception of the "attraction system" and your suggestion for sim-linked memories triggering emotions based on sim-presence) they're not "social" systems. The like/dislike system was based on things, not people. True, it might provide our sims with a character, but this character is still not perceived and acted upon by other sims. The same goes for the memory-system. If a sim gets into a mood every now and then, it's not a social event but restricted to the individual sim.
In order to add some true social aspect, I think sims need a way to perceive certain characteristics of other sims, evaluate their overall relationship to them (based on their perception), and act accordingly. I can't see how a true system for deeper social interaction can be any simpler without transforming into a mere facade. But maybe it can be solved in a much more elegant way than by what I've suggested.
Some thoughts on social locations
One thing that always bothers me with SIMS 4 is that sims turn up at lots and in situations in which they simply would not show up if they actually had a character. Party at the chalet at 4 AM? Great. Meet grandma on the dancefloor! - I've just placed a small scurfy fast food restaurant lot in my neighbourhood. You know who's already there munching her burger? Lady Bella Gracia Della Maria, rich as f****, living in the 64x64 mansion, wearing nothing but haute couture. True, situations like these can be considered funny. However for my player-type, they're getting old really fast, and actually they tend to make me stop playing the game altogether. Equipping sims with social characters should tackle this problem and, by the same time, make situations such as these - if they should happen! - really outstanding and funny (and also have consequences!). So, I think it would be a good thing to implement some sort of player-adjustable "likelihood of visiting" for each lot and habitus-manifestation. Social character does not only affect perception by others, but also where you would be spending your time.
I think that certain combinations of traits can serve as indicators or approximations of social character. Therefore, one way of stripping down the whole idea would be to base most of the habitus-stuff on the already existing "traits" of sims (and maybe also their aspirations?). This would make the whole thing much simpler because traits 1. cannot be switched, 2. cannot be acquired (you just choose them once and for all), and 3. they're already in the game!
The rest of the system (other sims perceiving your traits and acting accordingly) would need to stay the same though. Of course the perception of other sims' traits should still affect friendship-relations and romantic-relations.
For romantic relations, it would be nice to have some exterior factors in addition to the interior factors (traits), as descibed above (perceived habitus), like appearance, body shape, clothing. One could also add a fourth trait-slot reserved for an (non-permanent?) appearance-trait which should factors in very strongly for romantic relationships (but less strongly for friendship-relationships).
And we'd still need to be allowed to set the extent of a sim's preferences/tolerance of traits so that we end up with a nice variety of characters and behaviour based on social perception.
Social perception and (in)tolerance
In game-terms, a sim’s character is only determined by his/her traits. An adult-sim has 3 slots for traits. These are the 41 available traits that are available in the game:
emotional: active, cheerfull, creative, genius, gloomy, goofball, hot-headed, romantic, self-assured
hobby: art-lover, bookworm, foodie, geek, music lover, perfectionist
lifestyle: ambitious, childish, clumsy, dance machine, glutton, insane, kleptomanic, lazy, loves outdoors, materialistic, neat, slob, snob, squeamish
social: bro, evil, family-oriented, good, hates children, insider, jealous, loner, mean, noncommittal, outgoing
Right now, these traits (=your sim’s character) only work by giving your sim certain moodlets and perhaps they also have an influence on what your sims do if you leave them alone. However, these traits have no direct effect on the perception of your sim by other sims. Sims simply do not perceive the character of other sims.
If we wanted deeper social interactions, we would not only need to give sims a sensory organ to perceive other sims’ characters, but also give them a preference/distaste for/of certain traits. This could be done by giving us the capability to set the (in)tolerances of each sim for each trait. When creating a sim, we would find a five-level bar next to each trait. The default setting is the middle level, which stands for “neutral”. By lowering the bar for a trait, we tell the game that our sim dislikes/strongly dislikes this trait in other sims. By increasing the bar for a trait, we tell the game that our sim likes/strongly likes this trait in other sims.
As sims “get to know” each other in conversations, their traits are revealed to each other. It’s a pity that the discovery of traits is not linked to some more exciting/deep mechanism, but let’s just bear with the simple “get to know” interaction. The discovery of traits would now trigger reactions based on your sims’ (in)tolerances. A trait that is negative in the eyes of your sim will make friendly and romantic interactions by the other sim less effective and/or fail more often (resulting in a lower or negative friendship/romance-meter). Vice versa, the same is true for traits that are seen in a positive light by your sim. Thus, traits will have an effect on the friendship and romance-meter and might even give your sims moodlets (by failing at certain interactions).
As the friendship- and romance-meter between sims can now be (indirectly) influenced by the player (by determining the sim’s character), its current state should have more noticeable consequences. In other words: Social perception and the chemistry between two sims should affect their behaviour and mood. Thus, based on the current state of the friendship-meter, sims will classify another sim and act accordingly:
enemy (highly negative friendship-meter)
effect: being in a conversation with an enemy gives your sim a very tense moodlet, being on the same lot/in a certain proximity will still give your sim a tense moodlet. Note that I assume that the success-chance of social interactions does depend on your sim’s current mood. So these moodlets should indeed affect your sims’ social capabilities.
autonomous behaviour routines: evade (do not engage in conversation with this sim), limit friendly interactions, increase mean and mischief interactions
disliked (negative friendship-meter)
effect: being in a conversation with a disliked sim gives your sim a “tense” moodlet
autonomous behaviour routines: evade (as above)
neutral (slight negative or slight positive friendship-meter)
effect: none
autonomous behaviour routines: no change
slightly likable ( positive friendship-meter)
effect: being in a conversation with a slightly likable sim gives your sim a “happy” moodlet.
autonomous behaviour routines: seek (try to engage in conversation with this sim), slightly increase funny interactions, limit mean and mischief interactions
very likable (very positive friendship-meter)
effect:being in a conversation with a very likable sim gives your sim a “very happy” moodlet, being in proximity to him/her still gives you a “happy moodlet”
autonomous behaviour routines: seek (as above), increase funny interactions, limit mean and mischief interactions
Now, to point out some spice of this system, it’s important to understand that each sim would have their own perception of a relationship! Just because sim A likes sim B, does not mean sim B likes sim A! Just imagine how bothersome and annoying a sim who thinks he/she is your friend would be! Your sim would end up with a negative moodlet everytime his/her “friend” showed up and – even worse - actively tried to engage your sim in conversation. The only remedy would be to tell him/her the truth by interacting in mean ways. By being mean, you would lower the friendship-meter (also from your “friend’s” perspective), thereby changing his/her perception of you. I you managed to become “disliked” by him/her, he/she would try to evade you. Perfect!
Romance
So far, we’ve been primarily talking about friendships. So what about romantic relationships?
In addition to the 3 ordinary trait-slots (let’s call these “friendship-slots”), each sim gets 2 additional “romance-slots”: Each sim needs to select one gesture-trait and one “way of talking”-trait. In fact, you could call these traits anything you like. Unless we could link these traits to actual visuals in the game (e.g. for gesture: walking style), it doesn’t matter. We could also call them chemistry and zodiac. You get the idea.
Gesture: brutish, sloppy, shy/insecure, rigid, bro, elegant, strong/overly masculine, gracile/overly feminine, etc.
Way of talking: slang, robot, intellectual, snobbish, slimy, etc.
Basically, these romance-traits work just like the ordinary friendship-traits. This means you also have to set your sim’s (in)tolerances vis-à-vis each romance-trait. However, romance-traits are special because they are used to simulate the “first impression”. What does this mean? Unlike friendship-traits that are revealed in conversation step by step and only indirectly affect the friendship-meter by making interactions fail, romance-traits trigger direct reactions at the very first meeting. So, as soon as your sim engages in a conversation with a sim for the first time, his/her romance bar immediately rises to a certain level of attraction, depending on your sim’s (in)tolerance vis-à-vis the other sim’s romance-traits. Thus, if your sim makes a great first impression on an AI-sim, this AI-sim might start flirty interactions.
Note that friendship-traits still influence the chance for romantic-interactions (and thereby affect the romance-meter) once they’re revealed. A good first impression can be deepened but also destroyed.
In extreme cases, this system can lead to some awkward, yet interesting situations: E.g. even though your sim doesn’t necessarily like the character of that other sim, he/she still feels a physical attraction to him/her. It could be a relationships in which the partners wohoo but other than that are quarrelling constantly (because of incompativle characters/friendship-traits). Or vice versa: both sims like each other’s character, but there’s not much going on physically.
Note that just like for friendship-relationships, also romantic relationships can be seen differently by each partner.
I’m not listing romance-states in detail here, as it’s pretty obvious how sims with a big romantic interest would react. The stronger the romantic attraction, the more a sim will seek conversation, the more he/she will try romantic interactions, etc.
Additional idea: Love-sickness (as in first post)
The romantic relationship bar represents two things: 1. romantic interest, 2. romantic fulfilment. The extent of romantic interest is represented by an “unfilled” bar. The longer it is, the more in love your sim is (see above). The extent of romantic fulfilment is represented by a “filled” bar (filling up the romantic interest bar). The longer it is (in relation to the interest bar), the happier (and two-sided) a romantic relation is.
Romantic interest in a sim is automatically determined the first time two sims meet (first impression/romance traits) and are then influenced by social interactions and the discovery of the friendship-traits of the partner – all as described above.
Romantic interest slowly fades over time if it remains unfulfilled (or if the active habitus of the “interesting” sim are changed for the worse).
If a sim already has a high romantic interest in a sim, his romantic interest in other sims is somewhat reduced.
Romantic fulfilment is generated by positively interacting with a romantically interesting sim. Obviously some interactions bring more fulfilment than others (being close to your love = very low fulfilment; talking to your love = medium fulfilment; kissing your love = very high fulfilment). It is reduced by negative interactions with a romantically interesting sim. Again, some interactions are more “destructive” than others. Moreover, seeing your love romantically interact with other sims (“cheating”) severely reduces fulfilment.
Romantic happiness is a state in which your sim has a high and fulfilled romantic interest in other sims. Romantic happiness strongly reinforces positive moodlets and makes sims bear their otherwise potentially stressfull lifes (e.g. switching habitus very often).
Love-sickness is a state in which your sim has a high but unfulfilled romantic interest in other sims. Being love-sick increases stress, gives strong negative moodlets and might even lead to depression. As described above, romantic interest (and thus also love-sickness) slowly fades over time if it stays unfulfilled.
Additional idea: Interlinked and alterable traits
I think that we could really need the romance traits, as only two romance-traits (gesture/way of talking) do not provide much variance/do not make sims unique enough.
Also, the two ordinary romance-traits (gesture/way of talking) could be made alterable (e.g. as an aspiration!).
Additional idea: Let us change chance of presence of social groups on lots
I love how much thought you've put into this. I really really like the idea of a like/dislike system. Even if it's not this advanced any addition like that would be great. Love-sickness is a cute idea as well. I really hope they add something like this in the future or maybe a mod? Either way it'd be awesome.
I'm happy you feel the same. To be honest, I don't consider this system to be advanced in any way. I mean Crusader Kings characters (and the game manages hundreds of characters!) have more character/individuality than a sim! I can't fathom why hardly any effort has gone into sims' characters. I mean sure, we've got the moodlet-system and I actually really, really like it! It would make so much sense, BUT ONLY in combination with a proper social system.
Interaction success/failure chances in SIMS 4
I also wanted to point out this post here: h.ttp://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=22233.msg394949.html#msg394949
[not allowed to post links, please copy and delete the point in http; for "SocialContext" see here: h.ttp://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/relationships ].
The list in the link tells us the factors for social interactions to succeed and fail.
1. type/history of current conversation (SocialContext)
2. friendship-meter [except for mischief and mean actions]
3. charisma skill of initiator [except for mischief and mean actions]
4. mood of the "target" & of the initiator
5. For mischief actions, traits of initiator and target play an additional role
No information is given about any random factor, the number needed to pass for a successfull interaction (depends on interaction?), the amount of romance/friendship-gain/loss for a success/failure (depends on interaction?).
What strikes me is that the "target" only matters as far as his/her mood is concerned (and even here, it's less of a factor than the initiator's mood!). All other factors are located on the initiator's side. No wonder that under normal conditions you can get anyone to wohoo in a matter of hours.
Also, personally, I'd actually like to see how the checks are made ingame, and perhaps even get some feedback by the game. But I understand that other people might prefer the "hidden" tests in order not to be reminded that they're playing a game with rather crude rules.
Interaction UI
That being said, I think that social interactions are in general too spammy and vacuous. I mean we've got a ton of interactions at our disposal, yet in truth they're all the same with different names and animations. Therefore, I'd much prefer a social-interaction UI that is built (cascading) like this:
1. menu to choose interaction type (friendly, romantic, mischief, funny, mean, other/club/administrative)
2. menu to choose interaction risk (cautious, normal, bold - depending on the difficulty of success and gain/loss on pass/failure)
3. menu to choose concrete interaction/animation (e.g. when clicking on a sim with only a slight romance-meter, you'd go to romantic/bold/first kiss)
Also, it seems to me that the consequences of actions are not large enough. A "failed" kiss should practically end the date. If (some) social interactions were more decisive, and if we would know a bit more about success chances (by making the game more transparent to the players), I think we would be much more thrilled for the outcome of every single interaction.
Additional idea: Social Power (hierarchies, gossip)
Talking of which, a further steps to add some spice to this system would be to add hierarchies. It would be great to have a boss-sim whose opinion mattered for progress in job. Also, sims on higher career-levels could have subaltern sims.
Imagine how your sim, who really really dislikes his/her boss, gains lots of "tense" moodlets (for being in conversation with an unlikable sim) as he/she interacts in a friendly way to get that promotion!
One last suggestion to give more depth to interaction is to give social interactions social consequences. If you put someone off, it's not just about their feelings. It would be great if sims had a real way to shape the others' opinion of a sim. Gossip! Of course, this would largely have to work on a progression-level, so that sims who have a very low opinion of your sim will influence other sims' opinion of you based on their "influence" (=friendship) with those sims. This could lead to interesting situations in which your sim would have to deal with unlikeable sims and endure lots of tense moodlets in order not to have that other sim talk badly about him/her. Especially well connected sims with lots of high relationships would suddenly turn into opinion leaders that you'd better have on your side! Just think what happens if that rumor reaches your boss? Bye bye promotion!
Of course, gossip should work both ways. You as the player should also have the option to talk about other sims (even though there is no detailed simulation of their progression). I could also imagine that your sim has a "social power index", which is determined via the number and quality of all of your sim's relationships. If it is very high, AI-sims will be more likely to interact solely in friendly ways with your sim, even if what they really think of you is that you're such an unlikable ******. Super- and subordination could be factored into this index as a flat + or - value. If you're their boss, their social inhibition level would be greater than normal. If they're your boss, on the other hand, they'd have less restraint to let you down and show you that they don't like you.
Of course all of this is only usefull if sims actually had opinions of each other.
Change romance-trait as an aspiration
I’ve suggested to make romance-traits changeable as the reward of a special “change romance-trait” aspiration. Here are some ideas for the milestones to fulfill that aspiration:
I will come up with a final addition (social AI), a visual overview and hopefully a more detailed example of play to summarize my suggestion later this day. Or even better: maybe I can finally edit it into the post above once I count as a full member!
Social AI
If I was to design a social AI (to work with all the systems described above), I would go for a two step system: First, a sim selects an interaction based on his perception of the relationship with the target which is expressed as “archetype” (e.g. enemy, lover, etc.). Once the sim has selected an interaction, it needs to pass a “situational context test" because some kinds of interactions are rather unlikely to happen in certain situations (more details below). If the test is passed, the interaction is carried out (and may succeed or not, as usual). If the test is failed, the AI loops back to interaction-selection.
Note that all of the following would only affect AI-controlled sims and would be invisible for the player. The player just perceives the result/the actions made by AI-controlled sims.
AI-archetypes / AI-selection of social interactions
The interest of a sim in another sim is expressed via his/her friendship- and romantic-meter. The two meters determine the behaviour-archetype of a sim vis-à-vis another sim. I’m not going to list each and every single archetype here, just some extremes with all others lying somewhere in between.
Terminology:
romantic-meter: very hot (+75 to +100), hot (+50 to +75), very warm (+30 to +50), warm (+10 to +30), tepid (-10 to +10), cool (-10 to -30), very cool (-30 to -50), cold (-50 to -75), very cold (-75 to -100).
Friendship-meter: extremely pleasant (+75 to +100), very pleasant (+50 to +75), pleasant (+30 to +50), likable (+10 to +30), neutral (-10 to +10), unlikable (-10 to -30), unpleasant (-30 to -50), very unpleasant (-50 to -75), extremely unpleasant (-75 to -100)
EDIT: I guess we could do with fewer archetypes / fewer=larger intervalls. With 9 intervalls per meter, we would end up with 81 archetpyes!
The following list expresses the relationship/interest of the AI-controlled sim first, and then lists the likelihood he/she will chose to do a certain interaction. I’ve divided each of the interaction types (mean, funny, romantic, friendly, mischief) into difficulty/risk levels (cautious, medium, bold). For example, a kiss-attempt would be a bold romantic action, whereas “complimenting an outfit” would be a cautious romantic action.
20% bold mean, 10% medium mean, 5% cautious mean
25% bold romantic,
5% bold mischief, 5% medium mischief, 5% cautious mischief
25% cautious friendly
all other interaction types: 0%
30% cautious friendly, 10% medium friendly, 5% bold friendly
15% cautious funny, 10% medium funny
10% cautious mischief
10 % cautious mean
all other interaction types: 0%
20% cautious romantic, 5% medium romantic
35% cautious friendly, 10% medium friendly
15% cautious mean
10% cautious funny
5% cautious mischief
all other interaction types: 0%
So, for example, a sim who perceives a sim as “very hot” but at the same time “extremely unpleasant” would have a chance of 20% to pick a bold mean action, but also a 25% chance to pick a bold romantic interaction.
Now, wouldn’t it be strange if a sim who feels a strong physical attraction to a an otherwise very unlikable person tried to kiss him/her at the first meeting? Well, apart from the fact that such strong affections and feelings are unlikely (but possible!) to happen at the first meeting, it would truly be a rather unrealistic and awkward situation. For this reason, in order not to let sims give in to their natural inclinations like animals, I propose a “situational context test” that each selected interaction has to pass before it is carried out.
Situational context test
In order for a AI-selected interaction to be carried out, it needs to pass a “situational context test”. Let’s imagine that the game rolls a D30 and needs to achieve a 20+ (base success chance = 66.6%). If the test succeeds, the interaction is carried out/attempted. If it fails, the AI will pick another interaction (go back to AI-selection of interactions). Situations affect different kinds of interactions differently. Here are two examples for modifications to the roll of the d30, just to give you an idea how this test is supposed to work:
+ 5 mean trait (initiator)
+ 5 evil trait (initiator)
+ 5 mood: tense (initiator)
-5 friendship relation neutral (target)
-10 friendship relation positive (target)
-5 group conversation (more than 2 sims in the conversation)
+15 trait: insane (initiator)
-7 target is child
+20 initiator is child
etc.
+5 mood: confident (initiator) (note: sims with trait “self-assured” are confident more often, so no need to add the self-assured trait as well)
+5 mood: flirty (target)
- 5 mood: sad (initiator)
- 10 mood: embarassed (initiator)
-5 mood: bored (target)
+5 mood: happy (initiator)
-10 group conversation (more than 2 sims in the conversation)
-10 trait: shy (initiator) [this trait doesn’t exist!?]
+ 3 trait: romantic (initiator)
+ 15 trait: insane (initiator)
etc.
A universal factor to add would be social power (as described three posts above). Sims would not dare to put off a sim who has lots of good relations to other sims that easily.
Basically speaking, the social context would take into account moods (of target and initiator), the character of the initiator (traits), the age of the target and initiator, and the level of "publicness" (private/public).
So, from this example, you could see that a shy sim has a very small chance to risk a bold romantic interaction in a group-situation, even if he/she was totally in love with another sim. He could be more daring if he perceived that his/her love was in a flirty mood, and if he/she him/herself felt confident or happy. In the same vein, bold mean interactions are often interdicted by the social situation. Evil and mean sims are more likely to show open aggression (especially in front of other sims!).
From a gameplay-perspective, a social AI that works on these two steps should achieve two interrelated things:
Evaluation of interaction-success
For friendly and funny and romantic interactions ONLY, this list would need to be complemented by trait-intolerance. For each trait of the initiator that is known by the target, add a tolerance modification. For the final tolerance factor, determine the mean of all (in)tolerances.
Tolerance modifications
Note that I keep up the differentiation between romantic and friendship traits, even though this makes everything a bit more complicated. If the initiator attempts a romantic interaction, use “primary” for romantic traits and “secondary” for friendship traits. If the initiator attempts a funny or friendly interaction, use “primary” for friendship traits and “secondary” for romantic traits.
ROMANTIC TRAITS / Primary (if romantic interaction is attempted)
ROMANTIC TRAITS / Secondary (if friendly/funny interaction is attempted)
FRIENDSHIP TRAITS/Primary (if friendly/funny interaction is attempted)
FRIENDSHIP TRAITS/Secondary (if romantic interaction is attempted)
Example for tolerance-modifications
Sim X performs a friendly interaction on sim Z. Sim Z knows about sim X that sim X is "good" (neutral for sim Z), that sim X "loves outdoors" (slight aversion for sim Z), while the last of the three friendship-traits remains unknown to sim Z and does not take effect. Moreover, regarding the two romance traits, sim X has a "gracile" appearance (strong aversion for sim Z) and talks like a robot (slight preference). So, how would the base success chance of the friendly interaction be affected by trait (in)tolerance?
for "good" (friendship=primary/neutral): 1
for "loves outdoors" (friendship=primary/slight aversion): 0.85
for "gracile" (romantic=secondary/strong aversion): 0.9
for "robot" (romantic=secondary/slight preference): 1.1
MEAN: (1+0.85+0.9+1.1)/4= 0.96
This means that the base chance of success (as determined by other factors) is altered by *0.96. So, based on the perception that sim Z has of sim X, which, in general, is slightly unfavourable, the success-chance of sim X’s friendly interaction is reduced to 96%.
The same example for a romantic interaction:
for "good" (friendship=secondary/neutral): 1
for "loves outdoors" (friendship=secondary/slight aversion): 0.9
for "gracile" (romantic=primary/strong aversion): 0.001
for "robot" (romantic=primary/slight preference): 1.2
MEAN: (1+0.9+0.001+1.2)/4= 0.78
So you can see that the success chance for romantic interactions is more affected by sim Z’s negative perception of sim X’s traits.
Note that I’d actually like to give negative romantic primaries a greater impact, but with the (hypothetical) method of calculation, by using means, that seems impossible.
Effect of failed/succeeded interactions
So, once an interaction is attempted, it may fail or succeed, resulting in romantic/friendship gain or loss (as indicated by the symbols popping up over the sims' heads). I assume that the difficulty of the attempted interaction affects the amount of relationship gain/loss. In addition to that, with the suggested system, two things have to be consiedered:
1. Should trait-intolerances have an effect on the amount of romance/friendship-gain? I don't think so as trait-intolerance already affects the interaction-success-chance. So, making it a factor for loss/gain could lead to overly one-sided outcomes and snowballing.
2. With separate bars/meters for each sim in a relationship, we need to consider what a friendship- and romance-meter actually represents. It's not representing the actual relationship, which would be better represented by the mean of the bars of both sims. Rather, a single bar represents the "interest" of a sim in another sim. So, by failing a friendly interaction, should this make the initiator of the action less interested in the target sim? I don't think so. It might make him/her feel unfulfilled as his/her interest is not reciprocated. So this is very similar to the love-sickness idea described above. Mean interactions, on the other hand, could be used to actively reduce the other sim's interest. By being mean, you're being very direct! Therefore, I'd propose the following:
f = friendship-meter
r = romantic-meter
+ 0 - = gain, no effect, loss
Friendly interaction
Funny interaction
Mean interaction
Mischief interaction
Romantic interaction
This diagram gives an overview over the dynamics of the systems suggested above:
For easiness’ sake, I will call our two test-sims Paul and Laura.
Paul meets Laura for the first time. He is somewhat attracted to her as she speaks and moves in such a likable way. She seems to be in a happy mood just like Paul, as the player can tell by looking at the conversation-bar at the top of the screen.
The player does not wait for Laura to make any moves. Instead, he chooses to make a medium friendly interaction. He clicks on Laura, chooses friendly/medium and then choses one of the friendly/medium animation he sees fit. It could be a compliment of some sort.
Paul performs his medium friendly interaction. Laura seems flattered! It was successful! The player sees that Paul’s friendship interest-bar has increased a bit and also his romantic interest has received a slight boost, as attractive Laura does not seem to be totally put off by him. + signs pop up over the sims' heads. Hurray!
- gesture: shy (romantic=secondary/slight aversion): 0.95
- way of talking: casual (romantic=secondary/neutral): 1
MEAN: (0.95+1)/2= 0.98This modification was applied to the base chance (which, in turn was based on the mood and conversation context and interaction difficulty/risk). You can see that the slightly negative first impression has but a small effect and reduces the chance to 98% of the base chance. That’s no great surprise. Just because you’re not physically attracted to someone does not make you behave “unfriendly” to him! Moreover, as Paul went for a medium friendly interaction, the base success-chance was rather high. Had he tried a bold friendly interaction (like a hug), his chance for success would have been dwindling.
In this case, however, he was lucky and the interaction succeeded. Both bars of both sims get a bit of gain, with the romantic bar gaining less than the friendship-bar. Let’s say Paul is now at 10f/45r and Laura (whose bars are invisible to the player) is now at 10f/-15r. Paul seems nice, but he’s not really attractive.
Now Laura takes the initiative! She goes for a cautious friendly interaction. The player can see her running through a talking-animation and, by hovering over the actions-queque on the left, he can see that it's small talk.
- 30% cautious friendly, 10% medium friendly, 5% bold friendly
- 15% cautious funny, 10% medium funny
- 10% cautious mischief
- 10 % cautious mean
- all other interaction types: 0%
So, Laura’s AI had a chance of 30% to pick a cautious friendly interaction and it did. Next, the AI runs the social context test to see whether the picked interaction is adequate for the current situation. As the test is primarily meant to put a limit to very extreme and bold interactions, a cautious friendly interaction passes the test easily. It’s the most adequate interaction in any situation. It’s low-involvement small talk.As Laura engages in some small talk, Paul nods in a friendly way (well, he's interested in her and in a good mood, so no big surprise!) Some + signs pop up over the sims' heads.
- gesture: casual (romantic=secondary/strong preference): 1.2
- way of talking: intellectual (romantic=secondary/slight preference): 1.1
MEAN: (1.2+1.1)/2= 1.15This mod was applied to the base chance of a cautious friendly interaction which is by itself very, very high. So, the action succeeds and increases both bars of both sims by a tiny, tiny little bit (it was only a cautious action!). New bars: Paul 12f/47r, Laura 12f/-13r. Not much of a change there. Just some small-talk.
The player decides to try to “get to know” Laura.
Paul engages Laura with a topic in an attempt to get to know her. Laura answers evasively. Obviously, she’s not interested in any deeper conversation at this point let alone telling Paul about her personal opinion on that topic. She seems to think that it’s none of Paul’s business.
Oh my! It seems that Paul has taken the wrong step. The player recognizes that the failed bold friendly interaction has changed the conversation type from “pleasant” to “boring”. There are som - signs popping up above Laura's head.
Moreover, the conversation type has changed to “boring”. I have no clue how exactly the game determines the conversation type, but let’s just assume it to be that way!
Paul is now in a difficult situation! Based on her reaction, he reckons that Laura does not like him. If he stays “aggressive”, his chances for success would be even lower now because the conversation has turned to boring. If he continues to make bold moves, he might even risk to “force” Laura to make a mean move against him. By further lowering her opinion of him, he would make her adapt a cold/unlikable-AI-archetype which has a higher chance to pick mean interactions. The only alternative to a great risk would be further small talk (cautious friendly), but under the present circumstances, even small talk could slowly deepen the trench between them. Laura might think he’s very boring. So, in this case, retreat is the best option. Paul says good bye and disappears. He still thinks that Laura is very attractive and would like to know her better. But he will try another day, ideally when both are happy and the conversation context is pleasant. Then he will be more cautious.
Perhaps the impression that Laura has made on Paul (we assumed he left her with 12f/47r) might even cause some love-sickness for him. 47 unfulfilled romantic interest is a bit high. So perhaps we find him sitting at home this evening, watching TV, being sad about the course of this first encounter (sad-moodlet because of love-sickness).
Note that Paul might still find out that he doesn't like Laura for her character, reducing his romantic and also friendship-interest in her (once he gets to know her friendship-traits). The same is true for Laura, who might perhaps find out that Paul has such a nice character!
Remark:
I would see friendly interactions (first cautious, then bold) as a way to pave the road for romantic and funny interactions.
(In fact, I think funny actions could very well be considered as medium or bold friendly interactions that - on success - can trigger funny conversation-contexts and funny moods in the target. Right now, the game seems to classify interactions more based on skill (comedy, charisma, mischief) rather than based on social context/effect.)
Funny and romantic interactions should have a relatively high difficulty so that they require either a good friendship basis and/or a high base attraction. However, the reward for successfull funny (high friendship gain) and romantic interactions (love-fulfillment) should be higher.
Mean interactions, however, should largely be a result of a history of a bad choice of interactions (bad judgement of the situation) and/or aversions. Evil, mean, insane and hot-headed sims have less restraint to react in mean ways (even if the situation is inadequate for a social eclat!). And of course the player can let his/her sims react mean whenever they feel like it. Also note that mean actions would be the only ACTIVE way to lower another sim's interest in your sim.
I'm unhappy with mischief interactions. They just seem childish. I don't see a place for them in a grown-up social system. They're a way of being actively mean to someone regardless of his/her behaviour/actions.
Also note that I'd try to get rid of social-interaction-spamming. Social interactions should in genereal have a stronger/faster effect on relationships and/or take more time per interaction. A relationship should need to develop over time.
It turns out that the suggested system would be fit to handle life stages in a convincing manner. It would make children, teens, adults and elderly people behave in reasonable ways. Characters develop as we grow up. Here is how this could be handled:
Children
Children would automatically come with no intolerances at all. Their intolerances would all be fixed at "neutral" or perhaps even "slight preference". What this means is that children would have no social reservations against anyone. They're trusting and might become friends with anyone.
On the other hand though, their behaviour would depend more on their mood. This can be easily achieved with a modification in the social AI's "social context test". Childrens' behaviour disregards the social context of a situation, they just do what they feel like.
Children come with only 1 trait-slot and would not have a romance-trait-slot yet. This means that children are rather unlikely to trigger any intolerances (except for the hates children trait). However, if a sim happens to have a strong aversion against the single trait of a child, then he/she simply hates that child. We all know that this occurs from time to time. Some children are just mean little creatures. That could make for some great moments, especially because the child itself might actually like that person who, in turn, cannot be mean to the child to make it go away (the "social context test" lists strong negative factors for mean interactions against children).
Teenies
Once your sim ages up to become a teenager, the game would set (in)tolerances for that sim (of course players might be given the option to alter them in CAS). Teenagers are very fast to judge others.
Moreover, teenagers would be given their second friendship-trait and they would also receive their first romantic trait.
With only two friendship-traits and one romantic trait in place, teenies would be more likely to develop strong connections but also strong aversions vis-a-vis other teen-sims. Why? Because 2 traits which are likely to "even" out a relationship are still missing - it's harder to strongly like/dislike "rounded" and complex characters (with more traits) than it is for characters that have yet to fully develop (only 3 traits). I think that this would be quite adequate and realistic.
Also, with their first romantic trait, they might start the "change romantic trait"-aspiration and spend a lot of time in front of the mirror or indulge in self-doubt.
Grown-ups
Not a lot to say here.
Elderly people
It would be nice to make elderly people's (in)tolerances become more extreme, or maybe even give them a flat -1 on all trait-(in)tolerances, so that they grow a bit more grumpy and crabbed in general.
"Nope, I ain't reading all that, nope the OP is going to far and too deep into this whole thing".
Some things are a bit more complicated. This thread is not about adding a new flavour of icecream or another call for "OMG PETS Pretty please!". It's a suggestion to give sims more character and make them act according to their characters. Since I had fun thinking it through in detail (more fun than playing the game in life-mode!), it did not end up as a one-liner. Noone is obliged to read through it if he/she is not interested.
It doesn't have to be, it's called criticism.
The lack of depth of social play is just so glaring in the SIMS 4. Might be related to the fact that it had been originally planned as a multiplayer game? Perhaps this is the reason why not a lot of effort has gone into characters and sim-social-AI.