More realistic/difficult relationships?
J. M. Pescado:
Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
I'm not that concerned with Sims' autonomous behavior (although I agree a bit more negative behavior would be more realistic / interesting). I'm more concerned with making the Sims an interesting and fun game to -play-. The current game makes me feel like I'm exploiting it any time I do pretty much anything, because the results are so easy and predictable.
It's a video game. It's ALWAYS going to be easy and predictable. Everything is ultimately formulaic.
Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
If I decide to make a Don-Juan Sim, I don't want his romatic aspirations to -always- be an easy success. I'd love it if (based on his skills and personality), he occasionally got slapped / yelled at / attacked.
Doesn't this already happen?
Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
If I make a Sim that's looking for true love, I'd love for that 'special someone' to actually feel special, not just be any random Sim I pick. If I make -any- Sim, I'd love for them to have an assortment of varying levels friends -and- enemies, without me having to force the issue by randomly poking people. The social aspects of the Sims are the most interesting concept to me, but the implementation strips away 90% of the potential.
And you seriously expect a computer to be able to model the vagaries of social dynamics? We don't even understand them ourselves, much less know how to program this into a computer!
Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
1) Make non-chat interactions capable of a negative result, even if STR/LTR is high enough to succeed. This would eliminate the current ease of maintaining relationships by sticking to the 100% safe interactions. If your Sim is incompatible with another Sim, attempting to kiss them could result in a relationship -loss- (you banged noses and drooled on them, you schmuck!).
This already happens. Some interactions are dependent on your target's mood for succeed, something which is not readily ascertainable with any useful degree of precision. In fact, you can see this sort of thing happening already with X-bolt sims.
Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
2) Make all interactions have varying +/- STR/LTR effects, based on compatibility. Kiss a Sim that your Sim is very compatible with, and the gain might be double the current amount (sparks fly!).
To some degree, this already exists, as a part of the system added in NL: Better boltage causes higher-level actions to be unlocked sooner, which mostly just lets you crash and burn more spectacularly, which I guess is what you wanted anyway.
Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
Similarly, the +/- for chats would be based on how -much- the Sim likes that topic. Talk sports to a sports nut, get +5. Talk sports to someone with only a casual interest, get +2. Talk sports to a sports hater, get -5.
This already happens. In fact, that's pretty much exactly what happens. Have you actually played it?
Soylent Sim:
Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
stuff
Rather than just saying "it'd be swell if personality had more of an impact", I'm curious how you would apply these influences and caps based on what traits. Just give benchmark figures, see how the community takes to them, and you'll see why a mod like this wouldn't really take off even if it were created. Things that sound good in the vaguest terms can become clearer with specifics, so let's hear some of your specifics. Not to mention the fact that once said specifics are known, you'll be back to your regular formulaic style of play.
More to the point, PCSims might not be the platform you're happiest with. The lack of difficulty is partly due to Maxian expectations of your average simmer, and partly due to the fact that the game does as well as it does by covering so many bases. First-person style playing has to be simple; to keep the storytellers from having to spend too much of their time on maintainence, to let hands-off style players enjoy their game, not to mention that if a single sim is challenging you've made families significantly more so. If you're looking for a game based around challenging your skills as a single character throughout the game, you might be happier with a console game or a sims knockoff game.
J. M. Pescado:
Quote from: Soylent Sim on 2007 July 14, 08:23:22
Rather than just saying "it'd be swell if personality had more of an impact", I'm curious how you would apply these influences and caps based on what traits. Just give benchmark figures, see how the community takes to them, and you'll see why a mod like this wouldn't really take off even if it were created. Things that sound good in the vaguest terms can become clearer with specifics, so let's hear some of your specifics. Not to mention the fact that once said specifics are known, you'll be back to your regular formulaic style of play.
This is fundamentally the case, that once the rules are known, everything comes trivial as it breaks down into simple mathematical analysis. Besides, what effect would "caps" really have? Right now, we have a cap which is the same, 100/100, but changing this would just either produce a new ceiling that we'd see as the new 100, or move things into "don't bother trying". It's like "bad" character development in an RPG, where you know one path dead ends far short of its potential: You never take that path.
Farsight:
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2007 July 14, 06:29:38
Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
I'm not that concerned with Sims' autonomous behavior (although I agree a bit more negative behavior would be more realistic / interesting). I'm more concerned with making the Sims an interesting and fun game to -play-. The current game makes me feel like I'm exploiting it any time I do pretty much anything, because the results are so easy and predictable.
It's a video game. It's ALWAYS going to be easy and predictable. Everything is ultimately formulaic.
That's a cop-out. Plenty of games manage to be challenging. Plenty of games manage to prevent you from knowing exactly how successful you'll be before you even start.
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Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
If I decide to make a Don-Juan Sim, I don't want his romatic aspirations to -always- be an easy success. I'd love it if (based on his skills and personality), he occasionally got slapped / yelled at / attacked.
Doesn't this already happen?
Unless you intentionally make it happen, no.
1) Chat until relationship is at X.
2) Use other interactions you know will succeed until relationship is at 100.
3) Rinse. Repeat.
That's a 100% sure-fire method of obtaining a new best friend or love in the current game. Personality traits, likes/dislikes, chemistry all become meaningless. Every Sim in the game will be a blissful friend or lover without fail.
To me, that's not interesting, challenging, or fun.
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Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
If I make a Sim that's looking for true love, I'd love for that 'special someone' to actually feel special, not just be any random Sim I pick. If I make -any- Sim, I'd love for them to have an assortment of varying levels friends -and- enemies, without me having to force the issue by randomly poking people. The social aspects of the Sims are the most interesting concept to me, but the implementation strips away 90% of the potential.
And you seriously expect a computer to be able to model the vagaries of social dynamics? We don't even understand them ourselves, much less know how to program this into a computer!
You're stating it as if it can't be done with 100% accuracy, it's pointless, as if it were a problem to be solved, with only one 'correct' solution.
I'm not interested in a perfectly accurate model at all. I'm looking at it as something that can be improved - the game ---is--- trying to model social dynamics, so unless they've already done it perfectly, why not try to improve on their attempt?
I'm also looking at it as a game system that currently fails to provide challenge or variety to the player. To improve that, you don't have to accurately model social dynamics, all you have to do is present a believable -appearance- of social dynamics.
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Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
1) Make non-chat interactions capable of a negative result, even if STR/LTR is high enough to succeed. This would eliminate the current ease of maintaining relationships by sticking to the 100% safe interactions. If your Sim is incompatible with another Sim, attempting to kiss them could result in a relationship -loss- (you banged noses and drooled on them, you schmuck!).
This already happens. Some interactions are dependent on your target's mood for succeed, something which is not readily ascertainable with any useful degree of precision. In fact, you can see this sort of thing happening already with X-bolt sims.
Yeah, exactly. That's why I was thinking of it as a possible place to tweak and expand, since there's a clear 'decision' branch there.
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Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
2) Make all interactions have varying +/- STR/LTR effects, based on compatibility. Kiss a Sim that your Sim is very compatible with, and the gain might be double the current amount (sparks fly!).
To some degree, this already exists, as a part of the system added in NL: Better boltage causes higher-level actions to be unlocked sooner, which mostly just lets you crash and burn more spectacularly, which I guess is what you wanted anyway.
No, something less than near-100% predictability is what I want. The Chemistry system doesn't currently address that at all. I'm talking about 2 Sims' personalities affecting all interactions instead of the STR/LTR which is currently used nearly all of the time.
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Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
Similarly, the +/- for chats would be based on how -much- the Sim likes that topic. Talk sports to a sports nut, get +5. Talk sports to someone with only a casual interest, get +2. Talk sports to a sports hater, get -5.
This already happens. In fact, that's pretty much exactly what happens. Have you actually played it?
As far as I've seen, successful chats are nearly always +5. Failed chats are -2. I can't recall ever seeing a -5. I wasn't suggesting this would be some brand new system, in fact the point was to make it as small (and hopefully easy) of a tweak as possible. In this case, the result would be a completely balanced scale from -5 to +5, with every value in-between, instead of the current system that skews -heavily- towards a +5 result. I guess I should have been more specific to get a real response.
Quote from: Soylent Sim
Rather than just saying "it'd be swell if personality had more of an impact", I'm curious how you would apply these influences and caps based on what traits. Just give benchmark figures, see how the community takes to them, and you'll see why a mod like this wouldn't really take off even if it were created. Things that sound good in the vaguest terms can become clearer with specifics, so let's hear some of your specifics. Not to mention the fact that once said specifics are known, you'll be back to your regular formulaic style of play.
Actually, I don't recall ever stating a goal for such a Mod to "take off" - I was merely asking for advice on what was possible before I devoted time to digging around in the internals. If people loved it, great. If not, well, then it'd be like 90% of the mods floating around. :)
I've already described the kinds of traits the game provides that can be used to determine compatibility. Specific figures are pointless before you even know what is possible. Further, specific figures would only be a first guess anyway, as such a system would require a great deal of tweaking to get a good result. Lastly, if public reception of such a mod were a concern, I'd likely make an effort to make the values changeable by the user.
As for it always resulting in formulaic gameplay, that is simply false. Removing the extreme predictability and known success of actions requires the player to react and rethink depending on the situation and the results.
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More to the point, PCSims might not be the platform you're happiest with.
Because I'd like to tweak an aspect of the game I find imperfect, I should go track down some nonexistant game and play it?
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The lack of difficulty is partly due to Maxian expectations of your average simmer, and partly due to the fact that the game does as well as it does by covering so many bases. First-person style playing has to be simple; to keep the storytellers from having to spend too much of their time on maintainence, to let hands-off style players enjoy their game
What game? If you don't do anything, it's not a game, it's a fishbowl. If there's no challenge or risk of failure, it's a dollhouse.
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not to mention that if a single sim is challenging you've made families significantly more so.
So? Shouldn't they be? Families currently don't add any challenge, they just add tedium and micromanagement.
Besides, I see sites like this as addressing that side of things, by providing mods that allow Sims to be left alone more without them doing something incredibly stupid and/or deadly, allowing the player to focus less on the mundane chores and more on the big decisions.
I'd just like some of those big decisions to involve not knowing the outcome of your choice before you've even put it in action.
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If you're looking for a game based around challenging your skills as a single character throughout the game, you might be happier with a console game or a sims knockoff game.
Thanks but considering the Sims doesn't really have any competition, that's a fairly empty suggestion. Besides, I don't really need validation of my playstyle. It seems obvious that for many people, the only way for The Sims to provide uncertainty or a challenge is if they tie one (or both) hands behind their back via artifical rulesets and intentionally -not-playing- the game. If everyone else is okay with that, fine. I'm not trying to organize a political movement, I was just asking if some areas of the game even -could- be tweaked, not if anyone else wants them tweaked, or thinks I should go cross my fingers and hope for a "Fantasy Sims" game to appear under my pillow...
Soylent Sim:
Got your fantasy games right here. And that's not even counting the obvious ripoffs like the singles. No, they're not the simming experience we already know and love, but they illustrate a point rather nicely. If knockoffs that have a more first person style don't mesh with the community that well, that might be a sign that going that route with this game would be a bad idea. The best we can hope for is a loosening of the scripting for the stories line, which might or might not be to your liking; from what I heard, the only real difficulty to them came from wondering whether or not a bug would hit.
You want one of two things, and I can't really tell which at the moment. It sounds mostly like you'd be happiest if the dominant social strategy were tweaked, but that would only last until you worked out the new dominant social strategy for the new numbers. Most puzzle style games have a very limited shelf life due to that. The other would involve completely overhauling the socialization system for one in which every value would have some random modifier go at it, and as Pes pointed out we already have that. If you keep using interactions with low rejection thresholds, of course they're going to succeed. You're ultimately complaining that there are low-risk interactions in the game (I'd be upset if there weren't any), and that you can come in with perfect knowledge to make the most of them.
Really, I guess that's what it comes down to. If you want this to be a "challenge", that's easy enough to cover too. Have your don juan sim only romance townies (so you don't know their turn ons/offs), don't check the relationship panel, and don't go overboard with safe interactions before going after the riskier ones. Otherwise you're effectively powerleveling and then complaining why early game monsters are so weak.
(I guess if one wanted to, it would be best to have a limit as to just how high a given social interaction could push relationships. Chatting could only go so far before you'd need a riskier interaction to get along better, and the chat cutoff could be low enough that the other interactions could have a chance of failure. This would be a huge project even if I'm not missing any complicating factors, however, and it still depends on the attraction system with its relatively high granularity.)
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If there's no challenge or risk of failure, it's a dollhouse.
And on that note, need I remind you what the original working title for the game was?
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