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Bad things simply DON'T HAPPEN (or nobody cares)
Pancakesandwich
Posts: 2,038 Member
IMPORTANT EDIT: Please read at least the stuff on the first page before commenting. There are a lot of additional thoughts and ideas from a lot of helpful people 
First of all, I should say that I really like this game. You have a ton of options, and although it does have its flaws it is pretty enjoyable. Online-dating is a feature I'd love to have, as well as more actions specific to children and teens, but other than that I don't have much to complain about.
Just like my Sims.
A few examples: (which you may skip, technically, theoretically, but they are relatively important to understand the rest)
But: I think I have a solution!
What if we had an emotion that is contrary to being happy, and increases negative emotions instead of happy ones? It couldn't be called Angry or Sad of course, because we already have those. Something more... subtle. Something that few people would even connect with the Sims when thinking about it. Something that feels new and probably quite strange at first. And that emotion is...
BOREDOM.
Yes, boredom. The currently most useless and rare emotion of the entire game, a thing that almost nobody has seen often enough to immediately connect it to The Sims 4. This little thing could make the game much more interesting and challenging because negative emotions would be much more common than they are right now.
Here is a thing I quickly made with Paint to show you what exactly I mean:
(and yes, I know, it's called "Focused" and not "Concentrated"... that's what you get for playing the game in German I guess?)
My reasoning for taking Bored is:
1. There is no other emotion that is less rarely used and/or is less useless in the current game. So it shouldn't mess with anyone's beliefs about what Bored should be like, because it really doesn't do anything right now. And it would make this emotion useful as well.
2. I imagine boredom in this game to mean that negative thoughts can more easily affect the Sims, while they don't care about the positive ones because they can't think of anything that they would really love to do right now. And this would be the exact opposite of how Happy behaves.
3. I could've taken Fine as well. But it currently functions as the standard emotion when nothing else happens, so I didn't want to change that. Also, "Fine" means that everything's okay, so why should it increase negative things?
4. Because Bored is such a rare emotion and has few moodlets causing it, it would be easy to add a few new ones. And while we're at it, some Happy moodlets could be deleted as well, there are just too many of them.
5. Taking Uncomfortable instead would mean that the Sims mostly only feel bad if their needs are low. But it's relatively easy to get those up into the green again. Linking low needs to negative feelings would therefore be unviable as your Sims wouldn't have those bad emotions very often (or at least not very long). Which is exactly what our problem is right now.
A little side thought: What if a low Fun need would make a Sim Bored instead of Tense? That way, Sims would be more receptive for negative feelings and happenings after a long work shift. Basically like "Oh my god, the boss sent me from place to place the entire day non-stop, and now you come here and tell me my kitchen burnt down too!? That must be the most miserable day in my life.", which could be pretty interesting to play out.
----
Well, this entire thing up there deals with negative emotions barely being visible. But what about their occurrence in the first place? No matter how Bored you are, if the death of your father doesn't affect you then you ARE not going to be Sad. How can that be though?
And that's where I'd like to thank all the people who commented on http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/911772/jealousy-dramas-and-deaths/p1 so far, because THAT thread is talking about the other aspect, which is reactions.
Basically, if in a married couple one partner is caught cheating on the other, then they ought to react. Always. And this should actually stay for a while, so the moodlets in this game don't really help solving this issue. Which was however nicely done in The Sims 2 with the system of Fury. To quote the Sims Wiki:
"If a Sim is upset with another, he or she may gain a fury mark on the relationship panel, shown by a red haze over a Sim's portrait. It decreases the relationship drastically while it's in effect, putting both Daily and Lifetime scores below -50, depending on the offense."
It basically means that as long as a Sim is upset with another, they will temporarily get a much lower relationship. After the end of that fury the relationship goes back a little, BUT NOT TO WHERE IT WAS BEFORE. The other Sim can try to repair the relationship by apologising as well.
----
So, now I've rambled enough about emotions and stuff I think. Tell me your opinion and what you'd like to add/improve about this idea! (which is a group effort by now ^^)
(PS: Wow, the text file backup for this has 9KB. That's quite a lot ^^)
First of all, I should say that I really like this game. You have a ton of options, and although it does have its flaws it is pretty enjoyable. Online-dating is a feature I'd love to have, as well as more actions specific to children and teens, but other than that I don't have much to complain about.
Just like my Sims.
A few examples: (which you may skip, technically, theoretically, but they are relatively important to understand the rest)
SADNESS
When both parents of my Sim just died on the same day, the survivor simply gets one or two sad moodlets, not even enough to make him Very Sad. And they don't stack, which means that he is as sad as if only one of them died (which didn't happen: both died right in front of his face!).
And if there are enough paintings (that may look exactly the same, it doesn't matter) in the room he even FORGETS about his parents, the two people who have always been there for him and supported him throughout his entire life before passing away. He simply doesn't care anymore, and is Happy or even Very Happy just right after having one of the most traumatic experiences a Sim in this game could possibly have.
The thing with the paintings is: You can't put so many of them in the bathroom. So he's suddenly depressed when he enters the bathroom. Or if he goes out of the house. Seriously? I mean, what I have to think the developers are trying to tell me is: If you let him shower within the next two days, you are basically torturing him (looking at it like this, you are being more cruel to the players than to the Sims.).
Yes, two days. Because even the worst Sadness moodlet wears off after that time. I'd expect two weeks for EACH of the parents (so four weeks in total) for such a situation. Okay, let's make it one week per person. Still much more than it is right now.
And then, the actions that are unique to being sad (like blogging about feelings or making sad paintings) shouldn't decrease the time the moodlets need to disappear. If I had painted a lot after my dog died some years ago, that wouldn't have made me forget about her and our awesome time together any faster. If anything, it would probably have prevented me from forgetting because I would connect those paintings to her.
Furthermore, the Gloomy trait's description (at least in German) says the following: "There is always a dark cloud [of sadness] hanging above this Sim". So... why do they only get a +1 sadness moodlet every three days?
ANGER
Even if I create a Sim that is Hot-Headed and let everybody else perform mischievous actions on her, she will rarely show this anger. There are just too many copies of the Mona Lisa around to be angry!
And then there are Happy moodlets for literally everything: Meeting someone new, having a good conversation (not difficult, unless you insult everyone around you twenty trillion times), getting a new friend (again, nothing that requires even the smallest kind of attention: But in this case, your Sims do this automatically for you), getting a best friend, and much more. Even some moodlets from romantic success make them Happy although Flirty would make much more sense.
So, back to our example Sim: If she notices that her husband (who might not even know how hot-headed she is, because she has never shown anger in the past twelve years of them being together) is two-timing her with her own sister in the bed of their daughter, then she gets REALLY furious. Even so much that it will annihilate the effects of her thirty Happy moodlets she's got from talking to others for two minutes. And then, aaaand then, she immediately dies of heart explosion.
While sadness is just going away too easily, the problem with anger is its lethality. I like playing with angry Sims because they have some pretty epic possible interactions if they DO get angry (which happens very rarely, as the happiness moodlets are just too strong to resist), but if they DO get angry then it's often deadly. Far too often.
STRESS / SHOCK / BEING ANNOYED
Well, being Tense in a Sims game is a pretty weird thing. You get Tense if you don't have enough fun (shouldn't this make you Bored?), but also from being scared (this should be its own emotion), shocked, stressed or pretty much everything else that doesn't fit into the other emotions.
This one is actually not so much of a problem in terms of being rare, but instead there are not enough options to get rid of it.
I often let my Sims work hard to get some promotions and coins rolling into their pockets in the beginning of their career, so their fun need will decrease pretty fast. They are mostly Tense when they get home, so they'll need some TV first. Because this, aside from playing video games, seems to be one of the few ways of getting away with stress. Oh, and if you don't live alone you can tell jokes to everyone. But that's quite dangerous because Playful can turn into Hysterical and that causes death.
BOREDOM
Yes, this emotion exists. Some people may have never seen it in action. Simply because there is NOTHING even remotely boring about watching a painting. I've played for 180 hours and it briefly popped up twice.
This only appears if you repeatedly choose the same interaction in a conversation, and as a moodlet you randomly get from work, and the two options your Sim will get from being Bored are:
"Complain about boredom"
"Propose fun activities"
That's it.
And usually, the Bored emotion just turns into thin air after 10 in-game minutes anyways. I can't say much about it, because it doesn't seem to actually exist.
Dear developers: Why do we have a Bored emotion, if it doesn't do anything special and is rare enough to count as an endangered species anyways?
HAPPINESS
I wrote about this throughout my entire text, so this is just a short overview: Too many happiness moodlets. Yeah, that's all I wrote about it so far. But I do have one other thing to add:
Because Happy isn't exactly its own emotion, but rather a placeholder for another positive emotion (Playful, Flirty,...), it will always drastically increase those emotions. So you just need a +1 Playful moodlet and a ton of paintings to - in some cases - get hysterical and die immediately. Just because someone told you a joke. But then again, the happiness that is spread all over the world(s) prevents your Sims from dying of anything negative, like embarrassment or anger, unless those really go over the top (in which case it is certainly too late).
When both parents of my Sim just died on the same day, the survivor simply gets one or two sad moodlets, not even enough to make him Very Sad. And they don't stack, which means that he is as sad as if only one of them died (which didn't happen: both died right in front of his face!).
And if there are enough paintings (that may look exactly the same, it doesn't matter) in the room he even FORGETS about his parents, the two people who have always been there for him and supported him throughout his entire life before passing away. He simply doesn't care anymore, and is Happy or even Very Happy just right after having one of the most traumatic experiences a Sim in this game could possibly have.
The thing with the paintings is: You can't put so many of them in the bathroom. So he's suddenly depressed when he enters the bathroom. Or if he goes out of the house. Seriously? I mean, what I have to think the developers are trying to tell me is: If you let him shower within the next two days, you are basically torturing him (looking at it like this, you are being more cruel to the players than to the Sims.).
Yes, two days. Because even the worst Sadness moodlet wears off after that time. I'd expect two weeks for EACH of the parents (so four weeks in total) for such a situation. Okay, let's make it one week per person. Still much more than it is right now.
And then, the actions that are unique to being sad (like blogging about feelings or making sad paintings) shouldn't decrease the time the moodlets need to disappear. If I had painted a lot after my dog died some years ago, that wouldn't have made me forget about her and our awesome time together any faster. If anything, it would probably have prevented me from forgetting because I would connect those paintings to her.
Furthermore, the Gloomy trait's description (at least in German) says the following: "There is always a dark cloud [of sadness] hanging above this Sim". So... why do they only get a +1 sadness moodlet every three days?
ANGER
Even if I create a Sim that is Hot-Headed and let everybody else perform mischievous actions on her, she will rarely show this anger. There are just too many copies of the Mona Lisa around to be angry!
And then there are Happy moodlets for literally everything: Meeting someone new, having a good conversation (not difficult, unless you insult everyone around you twenty trillion times), getting a new friend (again, nothing that requires even the smallest kind of attention: But in this case, your Sims do this automatically for you), getting a best friend, and much more. Even some moodlets from romantic success make them Happy although Flirty would make much more sense.
So, back to our example Sim: If she notices that her husband (who might not even know how hot-headed she is, because she has never shown anger in the past twelve years of them being together) is two-timing her with her own sister in the bed of their daughter, then she gets REALLY furious. Even so much that it will annihilate the effects of her thirty Happy moodlets she's got from talking to others for two minutes. And then, aaaand then, she immediately dies of heart explosion.
While sadness is just going away too easily, the problem with anger is its lethality. I like playing with angry Sims because they have some pretty epic possible interactions if they DO get angry (which happens very rarely, as the happiness moodlets are just too strong to resist), but if they DO get angry then it's often deadly. Far too often.
STRESS / SHOCK / BEING ANNOYED
Well, being Tense in a Sims game is a pretty weird thing. You get Tense if you don't have enough fun (shouldn't this make you Bored?), but also from being scared (this should be its own emotion), shocked, stressed or pretty much everything else that doesn't fit into the other emotions.
This one is actually not so much of a problem in terms of being rare, but instead there are not enough options to get rid of it.
I often let my Sims work hard to get some promotions and coins rolling into their pockets in the beginning of their career, so their fun need will decrease pretty fast. They are mostly Tense when they get home, so they'll need some TV first. Because this, aside from playing video games, seems to be one of the few ways of getting away with stress. Oh, and if you don't live alone you can tell jokes to everyone. But that's quite dangerous because Playful can turn into Hysterical and that causes death.
BOREDOM
Yes, this emotion exists. Some people may have never seen it in action. Simply because there is NOTHING even remotely boring about watching a painting. I've played for 180 hours and it briefly popped up twice.
This only appears if you repeatedly choose the same interaction in a conversation, and as a moodlet you randomly get from work, and the two options your Sim will get from being Bored are:
"Complain about boredom"
"Propose fun activities"
That's it.
And usually, the Bored emotion just turns into thin air after 10 in-game minutes anyways. I can't say much about it, because it doesn't seem to actually exist.
Dear developers: Why do we have a Bored emotion, if it doesn't do anything special and is rare enough to count as an endangered species anyways?
HAPPINESS
I wrote about this throughout my entire text, so this is just a short overview: Too many happiness moodlets. Yeah, that's all I wrote about it so far. But I do have one other thing to add:
Because Happy isn't exactly its own emotion, but rather a placeholder for another positive emotion (Playful, Flirty,...), it will always drastically increase those emotions. So you just need a +1 Playful moodlet and a ton of paintings to - in some cases - get hysterical and die immediately. Just because someone told you a joke. But then again, the happiness that is spread all over the world(s) prevents your Sims from dying of anything negative, like embarrassment or anger, unless those really go over the top (in which case it is certainly too late).
But: I think I have a solution!
What if we had an emotion that is contrary to being happy, and increases negative emotions instead of happy ones? It couldn't be called Angry or Sad of course, because we already have those. Something more... subtle. Something that few people would even connect with the Sims when thinking about it. Something that feels new and probably quite strange at first. And that emotion is...
BOREDOM.
Yes, boredom. The currently most useless and rare emotion of the entire game, a thing that almost nobody has seen often enough to immediately connect it to The Sims 4. This little thing could make the game much more interesting and challenging because negative emotions would be much more common than they are right now.
Here is a thing I quickly made with Paint to show you what exactly I mean:
(and yes, I know, it's called "Focused" and not "Concentrated"... that's what you get for playing the game in German I guess?)
My reasoning for taking Bored is:
1. There is no other emotion that is less rarely used and/or is less useless in the current game. So it shouldn't mess with anyone's beliefs about what Bored should be like, because it really doesn't do anything right now. And it would make this emotion useful as well.
2. I imagine boredom in this game to mean that negative thoughts can more easily affect the Sims, while they don't care about the positive ones because they can't think of anything that they would really love to do right now. And this would be the exact opposite of how Happy behaves.
3. I could've taken Fine as well. But it currently functions as the standard emotion when nothing else happens, so I didn't want to change that. Also, "Fine" means that everything's okay, so why should it increase negative things?
4. Because Bored is such a rare emotion and has few moodlets causing it, it would be easy to add a few new ones. And while we're at it, some Happy moodlets could be deleted as well, there are just too many of them.
5. Taking Uncomfortable instead would mean that the Sims mostly only feel bad if their needs are low. But it's relatively easy to get those up into the green again. Linking low needs to negative feelings would therefore be unviable as your Sims wouldn't have those bad emotions very often (or at least not very long). Which is exactly what our problem is right now.
A little side thought: What if a low Fun need would make a Sim Bored instead of Tense? That way, Sims would be more receptive for negative feelings and happenings after a long work shift. Basically like "Oh my god, the boss sent me from place to place the entire day non-stop, and now you come here and tell me my kitchen burnt down too!? That must be the most miserable day in my life.", which could be pretty interesting to play out.
----
Well, this entire thing up there deals with negative emotions barely being visible. But what about their occurrence in the first place? No matter how Bored you are, if the death of your father doesn't affect you then you ARE not going to be Sad. How can that be though?
And that's where I'd like to thank all the people who commented on http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/911772/jealousy-dramas-and-deaths/p1 so far, because THAT thread is talking about the other aspect, which is reactions.
Basically, if in a married couple one partner is caught cheating on the other, then they ought to react. Always. And this should actually stay for a while, so the moodlets in this game don't really help solving this issue. Which was however nicely done in The Sims 2 with the system of Fury. To quote the Sims Wiki:
"If a Sim is upset with another, he or she may gain a fury mark on the relationship panel, shown by a red haze over a Sim's portrait. It decreases the relationship drastically while it's in effect, putting both Daily and Lifetime scores below -50, depending on the offense."
It basically means that as long as a Sim is upset with another, they will temporarily get a much lower relationship. After the end of that fury the relationship goes back a little, BUT NOT TO WHERE IT WAS BEFORE. The other Sim can try to repair the relationship by apologising as well.
----
So, now I've rambled enough about emotions and stuff I think. Tell me your opinion and what you'd like to add/improve about this idea! (which is a group effort by now ^^)
(PS: Wow, the text file backup for this has 9KB. That's quite a lot ^^)
Post edited by Pancakesandwich on
33
Comments
We also need memories back.
If we had as many (and as diverse!!) traits as in TS3, there could be much more ways of getting the fun level up and Tense emotion down:
- Ambitious (those seem to roughly equal the Workaholic Sims of TS3) would be happy from whatever action they need to perform as a daily task in their job.
- Active Sims could get even more fun out of exercising than normal Sims.
- Geeks could get even more fun from video games and reading sci-fi books
- Lazy Sims could possibly get fun from sitting on their couch or taking a nap on it alone
- Neat Sims could be having a lot of fun when they can clean things up
and so on, and so on... (in this case, I just took TS4's traits as examples. The most optimal thing would be to have all the traits from all other Sims games in TS4 as well)
Definitely -- I don't understand how TS4 could be advertised as including the most intelligent Sims yet, when they don't even possess memories. TS2/TS3 Sims both had great memory systems (although I favored TS2's), where things that had happened in the past would come up in their dialogue and interactions, and even affect their mood days and days later. It even affected their sleep -- Sims could have nightmares based on bad memories.
TS2's AI system was indeed more.. simplified looking in CAS, but it produced the most complex and dynamic Sims to date. The expansions only added on it, making it better, too. For instance, I really loved Free Time's interest system, which would have Sims become interested in things they did daily. It made sense to have, and it was a great addition. I don't see how an emotion system which produces over-the-top emotions based upon tiny factors could be considered topping that..
Although... what if it was done in a way where Happy and Boredom cancel each other out? Meaning, a Happy can "eat up" a Boredom and vice-versa (like if you have a 4-hour Happy and then get a 4-hour Bored, they both disappear). That would potentially make it a lot harder to stack up high levels of Happy and would also kill the risk of making emotional deaths too common.
I think instead of removing sources of Happy, you'd just want to add in a bunch of Bored moodlets in equal ease of acquiring and equal length.
Agreed 100 %
I agree with this. It was so in depth. There were many a moment I found myself sitting there (and still do when I play ts2) exclaiming 'I remember that!!' to my sim.
Who let you out of your cage?
--T
But the Sims rarely react to those bad things. Your mom just died? Well, no problem, just go to the living room where I've placed a few paintings for you to enjoy. And *boom* suddenly there is only happiness left in that Sim. And is it really a bad thing if nobody cares anyways? I don't think so.
When one of my first Sims visited her neighbours, she chatted with the mother for so long (outside of the house) that they almost didn't notice how the teenage son caught on fire in the kitchen. My Sim fortunately extinguished him. But that didn't do anything, not even give the slightest plus to their relationship. And that teen only was somewhat uncomfortable. And you know why? Because his clothes were dirty, nothing else.
Then he went to shower off the ash, and when he came back I not only noticed that he had blond and not black hair (the black hair looked better on him though ^^), but also that he was happy. HAPPY. After just being VERY close to being burned to death. He should've rather been Tense or Embarrassed for at least, I don't know, pretty much the entire day. But no, instead he had to forget everything right away.
I, as the player, remember this little story. But there is no single line of code in the entire game that causes this event to actually have any effects whatsoever on anything at all. Neither the emotions of that Sim, nor the relationships between anyone, simply nothing but thin air... no, wait, not even that. Just nothing.
Booster! THAT was the word I was looking for! Thank you
And I really like your idea of having Happy and Bored "eat up" eachother. Basically, the game could count how many hours in total those two moodlet types would last, and then let the longer-lasting moodlet type take over and decide the rest.
I just hope that this wouldn't interfere with the framerate too much. Considering the frequency at which we're getting new Happy (and, if this does get implemented somehow, Bored) moodlets this could make the performance drop a lot. Yet another reason to decrease the amount of Happy moodlets / convert them into normal emotional ones.
Maybe Boredom could even increase from just having the conversation go into the same direction? What I mean is this:
If you use a lot of Friendly interactions (or any interaction category actually), the Boredom moodlets increase. At some point they will overwhelm the Happy ones and start increasing negative emotions. So, while flirting around without having any variety by making the occasional joke or a friendly hug, your Sim could suddenly get reminded of something bad that happened in the recent past and then not be able to hold back the tears / anger / whatever applies. At least if there is any reason to have a negative emotion.
This would actually seem pretty realistic: If the conversation goes around the same kind of topics, all Sims taking part in it can think about other things while the other(s) has/have finished speaking. And during this process of thinking about things, slowly but steadily (shown by the slow but steady increase of Boredom) their negative feelings would get to the top again and then they eventually burst out and show themselves fully (shown by the sudden emotional shift and, depending on the Boredom level, the intensity of the negative emotion).
And if it does get done like this, with the topic category being the same for some time causing an increase in Boredom, this could even work against the currently far too easy creation of a good relationship with someone.
There won't be the possibility of just endlessly flirting with the other in various ways for three hours without any normal or funny interactions inbetween, because that could trigger negative emotions in ANY Sim taking part in the conversation without warning. And that could potentially stop them from being able to flirt for quite a while.
But now you might wonder: What if there is no negative emotion right now? Well, that's why I'd like to propose the next thing, which is:
Make all moodlets, positive and negative, last longer. And yet another thing: Make negative moodlets more common than they are right now, so our Sims actually have a proper chance of getting one. The optimal state of the game would be, if every Sim always had at least one positive and negative moodlet respectively, so that variation in the topics they're talking about is necessary to keep them in that positive emotion.
I really hope that a Guru reads this one day, and maybe even adds something (or all) of this in some way.
Hey, that rhymed. Cool. I usually never manage to create rhymes. That's the magic of Christmas I guess ^^
I really do believe that certain aspects of the emotion system need a major overhaul. I'd like to see sadness matter more, I'd like to see them add a furious state so that Sims will actually get angry at some other Sim specifically instead of just generically angry. Jealousy in this game barely works because while a Sim will react in anger if cheated on, they don't actually get mad at the offending Sim so the relationship is ridiculously easy to repair. I've seen Sims slap their cheating significant other and then kiss them ten minutes later because now they're in a decorated room and happy again. It irritates me so much.
The lackluster emotions are just one reason why people say this game has shallow gameplay. Nothing you do really matters long term and it kills the immersion.
That happens even if the place isn't decorated or happy at all. Right after a fight, they start having a friendly chat with eachother. I could honestly think of a lot of other actions (mainly those in the Mean category) that would make MUCH more sense when talking to your worst enemy. But being friendly to everyone and everything seems to be the standard thing for a Sim to do, no matter who it is.
Why would any Sim who just lost their best friend to the Grim Reaper automatically use friendly interactions? I would expect them to shout at and insult the Reaper while breaking out in tears, but instead their tears fall on the ground while they hug Reapy.
Hugging a horrible creature from the underworld right after it took your fiancé away from you. Why not!
Talking in a friendly manner to someone who you have no reason to even accept living on the same planet as you. But of course!
But then again, there is a mischievous interaction with the rocket that allows that Sim to - I'm gonna call it by its name - kill the next Sim using the rocket. Just for fun. Really?
Aside from CC, I'm only using mods for extra animations (like Pillow Talk after Woohoo and Woohoo Acceptance Anims by Shimrod) and less autonomy (nobody drinks from the tap or mourns in my game anymore!).
But if there was a mod that would stop Sims from automatically being friendly to their enemy all the time, but then shouting at their husband/wife without being Angry at all, you couldn't say the word "mod" and I would've downloaded it already
Also, this gives me the idea of having automatic interactions depend much more on the mood of a Sim. If they're Angry then 50% of their actions will be Mean. If they're Flirty then 50% of their actions are about romance. Of course just 50%, because half of the time they would talk about other topics from the categories Friendly, Funny and some from Mischief. BUT only with the normal version of an emotion: A Sim that is Very Angry will have 90% Mean interactions (autonomously, so this will mostly define what unplayed Sims are like), so that should really make them SHOW their anger.
That would actually be a good way of supporting more extreme emotions. If they mostly feel Fine, then the negative and positive emotions could influence them much more equally. Happy and Bored should still exist (of course not as often as Happy is there right now), but the Sims should just feel Fine 50% of their lives if nothing special happened.
And I really think the decoration moodlets should be tuned down so that they don't affect a sim more than any emotional moodlets they have at this point. Also agree with the point you made about not enough fun being boring instead of making a sim tense, that would make so much more sense. I'm okay with the lethality of the emotions but I think they should have a bit more stages between 'mildly annoyed' and 'so furious that the heart explodes'.
I think your idea of boredom boosting negative moodlets would be a great way of increasing the weight of those negative moodlets. You've made good points and I really hope the devs see this and use it to improve the emotions system.
I do use a mod that removes at least some of the happy moodlets from decorations but this should really be toned down a lot in the game itself without people having to use a mod for it. If the player doesn't force anything most sims have a happy cookie cutter life no matter their traits or what happens to them.
Oh and yes I totally agree, sims shouldn't just go back to friendly chatting after a mean action was performed. The action should have an impact, for example the other sim could react by leaving the conversation or by engaging in mean interactions themselves, depending of what trait they have. A mean or hot-headed sim would respond by becoming angry at the other sim and being mean to them while a good sim might just walk away.
Taking a break from the sims for a while!
1. I like that idea with the fading moodlets. +10 to Sadness for the first three days without change and then each day it goes one level down: +9, +8, +7... and so on until it disappears entirely and that's when the Sim truly considers that other Sim's death to be a thing of the past. And those "sadness after death" moodlets should stack as well. In fact, ALL moodlets should be stackable and not just refill the original one. If two people I like died on the same day then I'm not just gonna mourn about ONE person's death a bit more, but about both equally.
2. The point you made about lethality of emotions is why they are too deadly in the first place: In my opinion, the line between "just angry" and "heart explodes" is far too thin.
Maybe there should be new reward traits (those are needed anyways, can't have enough of them ^^) to make a Sim immune to certain emotional deaths. Like "Perfect Self-Control" (1000 points) making death from anger impossible. That would be interesting when such a Sim is then trying to socialise with a Hot-Headed one who constantly causes heart explosions around themselves from making other people angry, but only your single Sim is able to survive that.
3. Thank you
4. I thought about using that mod as well, but then decided against it because I still liked the idea of decoration doing something with the Sims. But right now I think I should install it, because the effect of decoration is really just too strong, too uncontrollable and you basically need to build a house in a Victorian style to get the highest possible decoration moodlet.
5. And then, Insane Sims would have a completely random reaction! Yes! It could be like this: Someone insults an Insane Sim, they respond by getting Flirty ("your face looks like a toilet!" - "oh, thank you! *giggle*"). That would just be epic. I would constantly want to play nothing but Insane Sims if that would get implemented.
Or if someone flirts with an insane Sim, the reaction could be confidence. But wait, no, that could actually make sense: "Oh, I'm apparently looking so good right now that someone even flirts with me!". Okay, then... Dazed! Yes! Doesn't make sense, so it's perfect for this!
I so disagree with that stance. The sad/negative moodlets need to have a heavier weighting as a standard. After all one sip of a Moodlet Solver clears all negative moodlets anyway. I loath the fact that after witnessing a spouses death my sim will perk right up because of positive environmental auras.
This is something that has bothered me since launch, 'fine' seems to bland and is almost impossible to maintain as a standard emotion, one positive conversation or a meal and your sim is into 'happy'. Perhaps there should have been something like 'content' which was more stable and actually took some work on behalf of the player to swing the sim out of, either way, positive of negative.
Either way OP I agree with the premise of your post, emotions need an overhaul.
“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
That would be pretty nice actually. Or maybe another substitute for emotional deaths would be that you can't control that Sim for several hours then, in which they
(angry) shout at and insult everyone and get into fights with literally every bush around them (VERY literally please).
(playful) make jokes and only do silly stuff including a lot of things from the Mischievous category.
(embarrassed) just go and hide and not do anything that would bring them into contact with other people in any way. Maybe just running away?
And then I could totally understand having emotional... err, outbreaks(?) for almost all emotions. Except for Bored, Fine and Happy of course. Basically a period of time where that Sim uncontrollably acts ONLY like that emotion and does some extreme things that might never even show up in the normal interaction menu. That would be cool to have and actually give an incentive to cause such an outbreak just to witness this hilarity.
Pushed them to argue more and not once was he nice to that sim. No happy friendly lala land wishes. They kept making remarks even at dinner and would talk to the other 2 guests about each other. My sim is a coward and ran away after fighting.
I can't get this much fun in sims 4 no matter how I try because the only real emotion is happiness the rest don't last and when you fight with a sim they hug you within a moment.
complete forum tutorial
Thank you @MDianaSanders for halloween-fying Golluma
Take a screenshot. Go to the screenshot manager. Set image as memory (whatever emotions your sim was feeling at the time is attached to the memory). Then You can go to the screenshot manager whenever you want select view memory and then you can have the sim reminisce about the memory which will give them a buff relating to the emotion of that memory.
currently they are rather quite psychopaths & sociopaths with serious emotional disorders & a very short memory span
add to that the romantic interests & display of flirty "emotion" when interacting with younger sims & that's not a game i like to play at all
@AuroraLockwood
TS4 has a feature named "memory" but its functionality is actually just an instant drug to manipulate those sims to every possible emotional state, this just makes them more robotic
Yes!!
Personality,depth,humor,consequences,lore,customization.