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Relationship Culling and Social Decay
DOLLDRMS1
Posts: 2,955 Member
I play a vanilla sims game. Relationship culling and now the social decay for inactive played families is too aggressive. @SimGuruNick , if you are still gathering feedback on this issue, here is more, with a couple of pics.
I like to play rotational. I don't have a set schedule for changing households like most rotational players do of one sim week. For me, it depends on what I have going on with a particular family, i.e. a pregnancy or impending birthday. Also, because I know culling is in the game, I limit the households I rotate through to 3 or 4 since I am playing mod/cc free.
The save I am playing now was started right before I bought the Kid's Room SP but I left it to go to another save with children after only playing the first family of a single sim for a couple of days. I went back to the save, played the single sim for 4 sim days and then selected a pre-made family to add to the play. I played the Munch family in WB for 5 sim days and then returned to the first family to continue building a romantic relationship for her.
The first pic shows the relationship panel as I captured it before leaving the first household. The second pic shows the relationship panel as it was when reentering the household on the 6th morning after leaving. She now only knows 2 sims and the reduced romantic bar with the sim I opted to make her SO would have probably been non-existent had I waited a full sim week to return to the household.
Relationship culling and social decay rate as now set by the game are crippling and discouraging to a rotational player, if not downright game breaking "features." I do hope to see the pleas of the community to adjust this area heeded.
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I like to play rotational. I don't have a set schedule for changing households like most rotational players do of one sim week. For me, it depends on what I have going on with a particular family, i.e. a pregnancy or impending birthday. Also, because I know culling is in the game, I limit the households I rotate through to 3 or 4 since I am playing mod/cc free.
The save I am playing now was started right before I bought the Kid's Room SP but I left it to go to another save with children after only playing the first family of a single sim for a couple of days. I went back to the save, played the single sim for 4 sim days and then selected a pre-made family to add to the play. I played the Munch family in WB for 5 sim days and then returned to the first family to continue building a romantic relationship for her.
The first pic shows the relationship panel as I captured it before leaving the first household. The second pic shows the relationship panel as it was when reentering the household on the 6th morning after leaving. She now only knows 2 sims and the reduced romantic bar with the sim I opted to make her SO would have probably been non-existent had I waited a full sim week to return to the household.
Relationship culling and social decay rate as now set by the game are crippling and discouraging to a rotational player, if not downright game breaking "features." I do hope to see the pleas of the community to adjust this area heeded.
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Comments
I've seen discussion on culling for quite some time now myself and there is certainly an active discussion currently taking place on the new social decay for inactive played households. What I don't recall seeing are actual examples of how destructive the issues are for a rotational player by way of pics and time frames away from a household.
I wanted to illustrate how just taking a short time away from a household with the parameters they have currently set just doesn't cut it for rotational play. Just being away from a played family for 5 sim days should not take the toll on relationships I encountered, imho. I shudder to think what the relationship panel would have looked like if I had 3 families in play and had been absent for 10-14 days.
I'm not ready to give up asking for at least a tweak to the problem since I feel doubtful they'll remove relationship culling. If anyone else playing an unmodded game wants to contribute pics of hits to their relationship panels and time away from a household, feel free to add to the thread. It's often said a picture is worth a thousand words.
Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!
The thread shows how players would like to see it removed from the game, me included, but my gut feeling is they'll try tweaking instead.
It basically turned me from a rotational player to a single household player and I can't play that way. I find it extremely boring.
Since Sims1, I have always created and played my own sims and pretty much ignore the pre-mades and townies in my games. But Sims 4 is not letting me play my way because it ruins it with this relationship culling business on rotation.
Need help falling asleep? http://wry7000.blogspot.com/
Oh. But how long ago was that mentioned? The issue has been around since GT. Has it really been almost a year? I don't know, actually. All I really recall is that it was their answer to culling? Meh. I could be wrong about everything. I stopped playing in December. We're heading into October now.
I do recall it was one of the reasons I stopped playing. That and the speed issue that hasn't been fixed since day one, and only got worse when they added the TV scrambling. *sighs*
I seriously can't take any of it seriously anymore.
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/901148/any-update-on-culling-relationship-decay
@Neia has indicated there are changes to culling and decay in the last couple of patches. I haven't had enough time to play recently to really evaluate how much, or how little, I think the changes have impacted my save but feel I have seen some improvement. I truly appreciate the fact they are doing some tweaking.
There is nothing I hate more than the speed issue. My sim is sleeping, I'm letting it go ultra speed and now she is in the green, ready to wake up. Oh wait, now it is back down to red and suddenly 5 hours in the past -_-
I can't remember when it first affected me but sometime after March this year, and I'm thinking shortly after a patch in May or June. I was thinking about the relationship culling at first. So, yes, that one came in a patch in Dec. 2015. I had created two room mates because I forgot I should have created the female at the time I built a family who was to live with them as a tutor/nanny. So, I had to create her later and I would also need the male for a boyfriend of one of the Sims in the family/larger household. So, I was going to kill two birds with one stone. One would be the future boyfriend of a household and one would be their live-in nanny. Once I had them moved into their own lot, I was going to move her out right away and put her with the larger household where she belonged in the first place. (I forgot her, lol)
They were roommates for several Sim days. They were busy because he had to get a job. And she needed to meet that other family before she moved in with them. All was well until I decided o.k. they are not friends but close enough. So, I moved her in with the larger family (I had to add a room to their three story house), and she met the rest of the family. The next day I wanted her to call the male she left behind to bring him over, he was to meet the girl who lived there and become her future partner. He was no longer in her phone book. So, I guess that's less than 24 hours.
I was upset by other bugs in May, so I started over, totally new game, rebuilt everything, bulldozed lots in WB etc. Redid it all again. This time I made sure she was in the household before moving in the large family. I made a point of making sure the tutor/nanny Sim met this young male (I moved him into his own place, too) and they became friends. So, I switched to him (remember he is friends with the one Sim) sent him to their house, met the Sim he was to marry eventually. But checked his relationship panel. He no longer a friend of the tutor/nanny.
I would say that was about three Sim days. That stopped my playing since June. I did get DO and did fool around with it. But I stopped playing for real and haven't played the game other than to build a few things in Aug. It ruined my game twice. That is not the only families I play, and their situations turned out about the same. Unless they were way up there at 100% friendship and a few days or a Sim week didn't affect them. But it does if not at 100%
I want no limits in my game and no one should have to use a mod to by pass it.
Culling won't be eliminated, imho. Shoot, even Deaderpool has added a culling function to his MC Command Center mod at @IngeJones request. I read in the comments section of the mod at how it is one of his favorite features of the mod and with the number of casual relationships it removed the first time he ran it and that he can see why EA wants to cull them because of the number.
@king_of_simcity7 , I'm still playing mod/cc free but I can see that may not always be the case. I would love to continue playing that way but I know if something bothers me enough that I will add a mod, or take a break from the game. Truth be told, I used mods in both TS2 and TS3. TS2 was the most heavily modded with a good amount of cc, mostly recolors I did for new meshes I added to my game. For TS3 I didn't use any cc and very few mods.
A lot of popular video games have modding communities. I just got Cities: Skylines from the Steam sale and find I'm already perusing the Workshop just to see what's available. There isn't any shortage, lol.
For relationship decay, they've added a threshold, and played relationships above that threshold no longer decay. Depending on how you play, it may be enough for you. But if you have a lot of low level relationships, these will still decay. Thresholds are -20/20 at the moment.
For relationship culling, they've made it less aggressive for played relationships and a bit more aggressive toward unplayed relationships. You can have up to 35 relationships for played Sims. So once again, depending on how you play, this may be enough for you.
I've not completed Friend of the World aspiration but there are other aspirations I've not completed either. I just don't focus on aspirations.
@Neia , thanks for the numbers. Since I don't rotate through a ton of households, nor have a lot of multi-generational families going, that should work for me at this point in time. I really appreciate you providing the information since tweaks don't always make it into patch notes. I get why but since I don't mod and have no need to wade through game files, it's helpful when someone who does shares information...thank you.
I'm sorry, I can not start over again for the eleventh time. I don't intend to do that anymore. Or reset my files, or email my saves, or keep my fingers crossed behind my back. You get my tired, worn out frustration. And after $200 (?) if you consider I bought the game at half price the first week, the GPs at full price, except one, the two EPs one at full price, one a gift, and a few stuff packs at full price, I don't think I'm going to mod out or fix anything. Not my job, that's Maxis job to build a good game. Not one that needs 'fixin'. Didn't do it for TS3 and won't do it for TS4.
Yes! MC Command Mod is good for story progression, but I still need to change some things. I don't like how you just stop playing a household for a couple of days and they have a romantic relationship with the most random Sims around the world.
I do have MCCommander.... but Idk if it worked or if I really just have to make it so NO culling happens? I'm sort of stuck with this because by the time I circle back to house 1 on my list of 42 and growing, I'm sort of at square one in the relationship panel anyway. And I have always played rotational since S1. I wish they'd have kept that mechanic the same as S2 and "freeze" the household when you leave.
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/905991/culling-relationship-culling-decay-current-status
I certainly recommend bookmarking it for any questions you have on this subject. It isn't to be used as a feedback thread but should provide simmers with the information needed on culling and decay, as well as a thread to ask specific questions. I'm grateful to them for taking the time to do this.
You might also want to read this thread on how to fix the culling problem. http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/870524/relationships-culling
The Nrass Master Controller mod is for the The Sims 3. Deaderpools MC Command Center is for The Sims 4.
I have zero relationship decay, zero culling, roughly around 450 Sims in my game with the MC Command Center mod and the game keeps generating more townies.
OP you could obtain the beloved trait. It is supposed to stop the relationship decay. I can't recall if it is a trait you purchase with satisfaction points or earn it from on of the aspirations. I want to say aspiration though. You can also use the cheat traits.equip_trait beloved to obtain it as well.
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