Do sims behave differently after the gender preference update?

Atreya33

I am wondering what people's experiences are with the gender preference updates. I am dreading to update my game because of this feature. I always liked that any sim was able to fall in love with any sim and gender basically didn't matter in matters of the heart. Most of my sims fall in love with a sim who is 'the one' for them and stay with that one person.

As I understand by default existing sims will automatically have default options applied to them. It looks like they are no longer romantically interested in anyone anymore but at the same time willing to 🐸🐸🐸🐸 anyone and everyone. That is not exactly what I had in mind because I almost exclusively play faithful monogamous sims. I am also a bit uncomfortable with separating romantic interest from woohoo. Do sims want to woohoo with sims they are not in love with? Do they autonomously woohoo with sims they don't love?

So I would like to ask people who already updated 'what is your experience?' especially with sims whose orientation you did not manually edit. Do they still behave the same? Do existing married couples still behave the same way?

ScarletSimEater

All the bugs I hear about are more troublesome than the sexuality options. I'd recommend putting off the patch until those are taken care of.

Once those are fixed, the key thing is that there's an option to be open to romantically exploring, but no similar option for woohoo exploration. So newly made sims can be receptive to romance if you as the player initiate, while woohoo preferences are a hard "no" if they aren't into your gender. Woohoo preferences won't make people go woohoo crazy just for the fact of their existence.

I would prefer that woohoo be gated behind romance too, instead of trying to express the complexity of human experiences into simple computer programs. But then I've always preferred mechanics to keep a light touch so they don't get in the way of people telling their own stories. The sims team decided to make a different call here.

Daephene

I don't think woohoo partners is an autonomous option. If you initiate the conversation you can have woohoo without romance but it shouldn't happen on its own as far as I understand.
I think the Sims start out with no gender preference for romance but open to exploring so that they will respond to whoever you have flirt with them and develop preferences from there. They are just set to woohoo with anyone so that when you get the romance bar high enough they don't reject you based on gender.

professorlilith

Although the team says the old townies don't have romantic and woohoo preferences, it seems like newly auto-generated ones can. My sim asked the fellow who had replaced the old Mischief Magic expert (the former one apparently died in a tragic accident because I set neighborhood stories to run) what his romantic and woohoo preferences were, and he said, "men." Also, it seems like my young adult, cis-male "hates children" sim is autonomously only into old men? Because he seems to want to flirt with every male elder he runs into, and he never gives a single flirtatious thought to adult or young adult sims. Could that be a part of the "hates" children trait?

RedShoe7

The gurus have said that if you don’t set any preferences then the sims will continue to behave like they always have. But my teen sim developed a crush on her best friend and anyone she was friendly with was asking her to prom.

DaWaterRat

Sims, by default, have always been aromantic - but willing to explore - and pansexual. This has not changed with the update. The update simply codified it in a way that the player could see and, more importantly, influence outside of gameplay.

Now, I don't have HSY yet, and I've only been playing with a dedicated married couple and their kids, but none of the premades have made a move on them, nor have they expressed much interest in making a move on the other sims. There was one want to flirt with another sim (who matched the played sim's orientation in my head) but the only woohoo wants I've seen have been "try for baby" with each other. (they have three. I'm done even if they're not. Yes, one of the two is family oriented.)

Jyotai

All my sims now claim to be bisexual for woohoo, but interested in romance either bisexually or with absolutely no one, not even their spouses any more.

I've a NSFW mod that lets me set attraction and preferences - it claims to be updated, but that will make it look like they've been set, but not actually work in game. That mod has a SFW version also, which I presume has the same issue.
Even after using the mod to adjust; Sims still refuse romantic interractions until I go into CAS and change their preferences.

EVEN IF I change them from bi... to bi... They won't act bi until I do that manually in CAS...


The two things that completely does not exist in my game anywhere anymore save for in sims I have edited by hand is heterosexuals and gays.

It's bi or asexual only.
- and the rule seems to be, if they were in a relationship they're now asexual. If they were not in a relationship before now they're bi. Or something...

Some sims that claim to be one of these two in CAS won't behave accordingly until I go into CAS and save out a change on them - and this has no pattern I've yet found.

The -bleep- hit the fan so hard on this one, the fan smashed through the wall, landed in the street, and got hit by a bus...

.

catmando830

Since all my Sims are old fashioned and traditional, I haven't noticed anything unusual.

catloverplayer

Even though most sims stick to their orientation you have sims of a different orientation becoming romantic interest on the social bunny site.

Jyotai

catmando830 wrote: »

Since all my Sims are old fashioned and traditional, I haven't noticed anything unusual.

I wish I could be so lucky. I'd have fewer couples to fix.

Even my married hetero couples have decided opposite sex relationships are no longer for them.

While my LGBTQ couples all went asexual. And my asexual townies all went bi.

Atreya33

Thank you all for giving a bit more insight into sims behaviour.

@ScarletSimEater Thanks for pointing out the bugs. Even with the emergency patch yesterday, I will still hold of a few days to see people's reactions before updating. I am in no hurry for the high school pack, if I will get it at all

Daephene wrote: »

I don't think woohoo partners is an autonomous option. If you initiate the conversation you can have woohoo without romance but it shouldn't happen on its own as far as I understand.
I think the Sims start out with no gender preference for romance but open to exploring so that they will respond to whoever you have flirt with them and develop preferences from there. They are just set to woohoo with anyone so that when you get the romance bar high enough they don't reject you based on gender.

Thanks for elaborating. it is reassuring to read that woohoo without romance only happens after a player allows it through a conversation.

DaWaterRat wrote: »

Sims, by default, have always been aromantic - but willing to explore - and pansexual. This has not changed with the update. The update simply codified it in a way that the player could see and, more importantly, influence outside of gameplay.

Now, I don't have HSY yet, and I've only been playing with a dedicated married couple and their kids, but none of the premades have made a move on them, nor have they expressed much interest in making a move on the other sims. There was one want to flirt with another sim (who matched the played sim's orientation in my head) but the only woohoo wants I've seen have been "try for baby" with each other. (they have three. I'm done even if they're not. Yes, one of the two is family oriented.)

Your playstyle sounds similar to mine in regards of couples. If this is how they react after the patch, then it will be fine I guess.

catmando830 wrote: »

Since all my Sims are old fashioned and traditional, I haven't noticed anything unusual.

Sounds like my sims should be ok then since most of them would probably also be considered old fashioned and traditional by modern standards.

@Jyotai this all sounds very confusing. I hope you can get it to work. I only have one big mod, mccc and only a few tuning mods for the rest. And in mccc I left a large portion of the settings on default, I don't use story progression at all. so I don't expect (or hope I don't) to run into mod related issues concerning the LGBTQI+ options.

catloverplayer wrote: »

Even though most sims stick to their orientation you have sims of a different orientation becoming romantic interest on the social bunny site.

Social bunny is exclusive to the pack, right? In that case it shouldn't bother me. If i ever get the pack, I don't think I will use the social bunny feature. I dislike having to keep up with social media in real life, so I don't want to do this for my sims either. Is there a way to turn it off in the game options?

wahini2024

You will want to assign your sims the orientation you want them to have as well as selecting "no" on if that sim is romantically exploring.

The only behavior change was the way in which social bunny and gameplay will effect the orientation if yes or no is checked in romantically exploring. If it's set to yes the sim will become romantic with both genders. If set to no they will only accept romantic interactions from the sexual orientation you pick. Social bunny has a way of creating romance meters on its own especially if the exploring romantically is left checked to yes.

No they don't autonomously woohoo with sims they don't have a strong committed relationship with and woohoo can't happen until a first kiss is had. Some of my married sims will autonomously woohoo but it's been that way before and after the update.

JueJue

catloverplayer wrote: »

Even though most sims stick to their orientation you have sims of a different orientation becoming romantic interest on the social bunny site.

YES! What is this? I noticed my heterosexual female suddenly had romantic interest with 4 of her female friends

Kerrigan

I think it's really cool in face-to-face interactions because if you have the habit of casually throwing Romantic interactions into a conversation(like me), there's a chance you'll get friend zoned so hard if you're not that sim's preference!

@Atreya33 There is a Disable Social Bunny option under the app so it may turn it off completely for that sim.

GalaxySimsGirl

For me my sims’ preferences seem to have automatically updated - one of my sims (female with the in-game settings but they are non-binary) has only dated women and after the update came out I went into CAS to change their sexual orientation settings to only being attracted to women and it had already set the romantic attraction to women only. Anyone know if there is something automatic behind the sexuality update (like the NPC autonomy update)?

mightysprite

@GalaxySimsGirl There was always sexual orientation in the game, but it was hidden. Sims started out neutral then developed preferences over time through romantic interactions.

Behappy1st

I picked who my sims would be attracted to. And so far 3 sims have a crush on the opposite of what I picked. So annoying.

Daephene

Were crushes part of the update or the pack? And do they happen to Sims other than teens?

And has anyone noticed if the update causes any more autonomous flirting? I haven't noticed any yet but I have been wondering whether checking a preference would make them flirt with that gender more. Or if it solely prevents the from flirting with the other gender (outside the social bunny bug)?

Smellincoffee

I have two mods that play with gender preference, plus now the game's own efforts. It's made everyone a bit confused.

SuddenlyMangos

Yeah I have one male sim, gay as Christmas, who wants to flirt with anyone who moves, male or female. To make matters worse, he's married. Currently trying to keep the homewreckers at bay...

Kimmer

Everyone's flirting with everyone now, gender preferences don't matter, being married doesn't matter either.
The aging is still not fixed and now I have to also deal with world of free love for everyone & 100% of population being pansexuals. EA really ruined the game with the latest update.

I'm slowly becoming one of the angry simmers...

Darren

I do have encountered some sims with fixed romance preference (which many people argued will not happen...). And no, those were not sims from HSY.

Jade47

I don't have the HSY pack either and I noticed the same issue as @Darren . I had a male sim flirt with my female sim and then when she asked him if he wanted to woohoo, I got a pop-up message saying he wasn't interested in that sort of thing with anyone, but we could be friends instead. I also had a transgender female sim who was flirting with a male and he turned around and said he wasn't interested in woohoo with males. I thought the whole point of this update was to assign preferences if we want to, not randomly dish them out to every sim.

Brd709

After testing with my sim self's wife, her romantic interest changed from men to women after a couple of flirty interactions with another woman.

GrimlyFiendish

Incredibly disappointed with the way this update is behaving at the moment. I have a mix of gay, lesbian, bi and het couples in my game. I've set all of them to their respective sexual preferences. The het couples are all still happily monogamous, the rest are running around flirting up a storm regardless of gender preference and/or current relationship, and wanting to break up with their partners for no reason every few game play cycles. Seriously, what the heck?! What sort of message does this send the LGBTQIA+ community? Oh those heterosexual sims are happily married and not looking to woohoo/romance/flirt with anything that moves, but if you have any sim outside of straights mcstraightville then they'll just start cheating & chasing after anyone, anywhere, anytime. How about, no.