None of the above.  Mail always goes into the inventory of the Sim checking the mail, regardless of who it's intended for.  Except for bills which still get laid out as they did before.

It's a little disconcerting when a Sim's father is carrying around a mash note from a Sim's girlfriend, but that's the way it works.

 - Gus

No doubt there's more information in the official Prima guide, but here's what I've deduced from actual play.

Outings and Dates are very similar.  In both cases, you get small bonuses every time you get Relationship adds, and a much larger bonus for fulfilling a Want.  On Dates, though, you can always see your partner's Wants, even if you don't control them.  More significantly, going on a Date skews both partners to roll Wants that are date-related, like "Dine Out," "Slow Dance," and the like.  With Outings, you're stuck with what you'd get normally, which means if your Sim currently wants stuff like skill increases or promotions you're not going to make much progress.  You also can't see other Sim's Wants unless you control them directly, though you can Ask if your relationship is high enough.  Frrequently the response isn't useful, i.e. "Eve goes to college!", which masks minor fulfillable Wants like "Play with Joe."

Thus, despite what you might think, the way to raise your score isn't to do "fun" things, but rather just to talk and fulfill any visible Wants.  The only reason to worry about Fun is if you're concerned a Sim may leave due to his Fun meter getting too low.  Like Parties, you need to make sure food is available, and that you give other Sims time to eat and hit the bathroom.  Dining out is frequently a bad idea because it's slow and doesn't raise relationship scores very quickly compared to simple Chatting.

Over time, you get small decays in the score.  This isn't a large effect, but it does appear that if the Outing goes on for a very long time, you can get a sudden big decay.  I've only seen this once so far.

Just like Dates, every time the Outing score goes up a category, everyone gets a slight boost to all their Needs, and more time gets added to the Outing clock.

The more Sims are in the Outing, the harder it is to get a high score.  I've had a 3-Sim Outing's score jump dramatically when one Sim left.

The easiest way to learn how to play Outings is to make a 2-Sim outing where you control both Sims, particularly if one is a Family / Popularity / Romance Sim that is currently on a "enterain target" jag.  I.e. they're looping between "Tell Joke," "Appeciate," and "Play with" the other Sim.

So why go on Outings?

If you're going out anyway, it's less tiring that "just for fun" because you get an Energy boost every time you raise the score category, and you get another overall boost at the end of the outing if the score was reasonably high.

The clock is effectively stopped, so if your Sim needs a lot of friends in a hurry, i.e. for a promotion for tomorrow, you can leave the house and make friends.  You can run several outings in one session without returning home.  As each one ends, just start a new one, particularly if you have a cell phone and can invite Sims over.  Just use "Manage Group" to create a group with your Sim and your target, and then "Invite Group For An Outing."  If you're doing well, your Sim won't get tired because of the repeated Energy boosts from the outings.

If your Sim is very Friend oriented for some reason, i.e. Popularity or Family, you get boost their aspiration meter into the white on an Outing pretty easily, and again the clock is stopped.  Fulfilling at 3500 point Want like "Be Friends" is enough to lift an Outing from mid "so-so" to "super."

Popularity Sims can use Outings to make several friends in one day without advancing the clock.  This is handy when you're trying for a lot of Best Friends, since maintaining friendship relationship levels can be a big timesuck.  It's still a timesuck of course, it's just that your sim doesn't run out of energy while doing it, and things like needing to don't get in the way with all the energy boosts you get.

Finally, Outings are useful for college students who want to increase relationships or fulfill Friend wants and have limited time to do it.

 - Gus

There are other factors like personality fit, aspiration fit, and history.  To test it properly you should note the number of bolts prior to changing the turn-ons and then after.  Also be sure you've "checked each other out" first, because it appears that Chemistry symbols don't automatically show up in the relationship window.  Sometimes they do show up on their own, but I get the impression you need to "check out" to ensure they're there.

I could be wrong, of course.  Players frequently read stuff into games that isn't there.

It definitely changes.  I've noticed that going on a Dream Date with a Sim adds at least one bolt.

 - Gus

So that is what the pie-menu lightning bolts mean!  I had no idea.  Seems like a minor effect, particularly since the significant issue for most Romantic interactions isn't "can I initiate this?" but rather "will this be accepted?"  Kiss and Woohoo being the definitive examples.  Perhaps Chemistry affects the requirements for that as well?  I think we're all aware that Kiss acceptance requires Best Friend status, and Woo-hoo requires mutual Love.

 - Gus

I see I was very wrong.  I had no idea.  Useful stuff.  As we know, on occasion Prima is flat-out wrong because they're working with pre-release information from the developer, but it still says something.

Most of the effects are intuitive.  The more expensive the car, the better for most cases.  Sports cars are a bonus for Fortune, Minivans for Family.  Some make less sense, like why the Sedan has a bonus for Knowledge Sims.

I'll have to expirement to see if this is a significant factor.  I don't know what the scale is - if it's the same as, say, Want rewards, it's a trivial bonus that is outweighed by a single Tickle action.

 - Gus

I suspect that's a Sim Urban Legend.  The cars seem like fairly ordinary Sim objects, with bonuses that improve with cost.  So far I've only used the Sedan, but it seems fairly cost efficient - a big boost in Energy as you change lots for not too many Simoleons.

 - Gus

My current impression of it is that Chemistry is crap.    It doesn't make relationships easier or harder.  I just fulfilled a "Be Friends With" Want between two of my sims who had one bolt of chemistry.  He didn't achieve "friend" status until 90 DR.  90!  Most Sims reach Friendship at 50 DR, though occasionally some require more.  Prior to Nightlife, if it took 60 or 70 DR to maintain friendhship with a Sim, I generally didn't pursue it - clearly these Sims didn't get along for some reason.  Now I'm supposed to believe they have chemistry?

Earlier, I fulfilled a "Be Friends With" want between Sims who had negative chemistry, and it was no more difficult than normal.

By extension, the turn-ons / turn-offs are meaningless.  It's fairly clear that a turn-on adds one Bolt of chemistry in addition to any from personality / aspiration matches, and a turn-off subtracts one.

I suppose the Chemistry may only be intended to affect Romantic interactions, i.e. Flirt and Kiss, but I haven't seen any difference there.  In any case you only really need those to set the Crush and Love flags.  Ordinary non-Romantic interactions make up the bulk of your relationship changes.

 - Gus

Just think of him as Dr. Mengele.  He's not a sadist, he's just conducting medical experiments. 

I'd love a mod that makes the game more difficult myself.  One of my problems with the expansions, both Uni and Nightlife, is that they make a terribly easy game even easier.  Uni makes getting to the top of a career trivial, to the point where you can fairly easily max out several careers before your Sim becomes an elder and can't switch jobs any more.  Nightlife makes maxing out a romantic relationship easy, so "20 Loves" is no longer a challenge to achieve before your Sim croaks of old age.

I hate Lifetime Wants, by the way, because permanent-platinum elminates all the low-level difficulty of day to day Sim life.  No, it was never that hard, but Permanent Platinum feels like "Reward: Lose all your Want slots."

I'm generally not in favor of removing anything that makes the game more difficult, but I must say the whiny stuff is annoying.  "You moron!  Why are you complaining about being hungry when I just told you to go eat something!"  It's the lack of responsiveness that's annoying.  It's like a shooter which adds "challenge" through really bad controls.  Still, I'll never install a "less whiny" mod, and I've never experienced the kind of whine-crisis LinoLino describes.  It just never gets that far for me.

 - Gus

I'm not an EA employee, nor have I ever been, but I know the business.

Getting bug reports from the general public is a hairy mess.  Heck, getting bug reports from QA is a hairy mess, and the guys in QA have more training that the general public.

As a programmer, you can't fix a bug unless you can reproduce it.  If you can't reproduce it, you can only guess at the cause, and there's no way to verify if the change you've made has actually solved the problem.  There's nothing more frustrating for a programmer than knowing a problem exists, yet having no way to attack it.

QA knows this, yet they still occasionally post a bug with insufficient information.  Sometimes it's because they omit a required action to produce the bug, sometimes they submit a save game that's too late because the bug has already occurred, and sometimes they have their own private theory about what's wrong, and they filter what they say through that.

The general public, on the other hand, almost always omits vital information in bug reports.  I'd say that 90%+ of the bug reports from the public are unusable.  What's worse, they're highly emotional about it.  Justifiably so, since they paid money for the game and they've had a bad experience with the bug.  The emotional charge makes it hard dealing with them, though, and often acts as noise concealing the bug information you need.

The main thing the form is missing is a place for a contact email address.  It's omitted no doubt because they don't want to give the impression you'll get a reply as a matter of course, because they'll probably have to throw out 90%+ of the reports.  However, were I the one making the decisions, I'd want a contact email.  That way you can follow up for clarifications and/or save files.  More, I would send a reply to every bug actually fixed internally.  Most people still would never hear from EA again, but the reports that did get a "confirmed fixed" email would keep positive word-of-mouth going about the value of the bug form.  Even better, it would encourage reports from the players who are best at sending in usable bug reports.

 - Gus

I'm kind of disappointed in it so far, compared to University.  I don't like the Dates very much because they're much too easy, though it took me a few tries to learn the ground rules.  One thing that bugs me about them is that you can sometimes ignore your Date's wants entirely.  Fulfilling Wants for either your Sim or his/her Date fills up the meter.  I had one Date for a Romance Sim go like this: Flirt, Flirt, Kiss, Make Out, Woohoo in Car, Flirt, Kiss, Make Out, Woohoo in Car, wham, Dream Date.  They never even left the lot, she never had any Wants fulfilled, she just got Woohooed senseless, and she yakked afterward about how she was going to tell all her friends what an amazing date he was.

The Dates also speed up the process of getting into a relationship more than I like.  Granted, doing it still takes up your time as a player, but a Dream Date can easily add half a day to a Sim's playable life, and accomplish relationship advancement that would normally take a week.  I suppose this is a good thing for Romance sims who want to hit that 20 Loves goal.

Outings are tougher, maybe because I don't understand how to advance them, and you don't get to see your group member's Wants unless you're controlling them.  They also seem kind of pointless.

On the positive side, Community Lots do seem more interesting and worthwhile now, particularly for college students, now that the semester timer doesn't count down Downtown.  I can also see that the time compression of Dates make it possible to seriously pursue romance at college without throwing your academic career in the toilet.  I haven't sent any college students on a Date yet, just teens and adults, so I'll have to explore this a bit more.

The groups are a big part of why Community lots are more worthwhile.  I hated using University lots because rarely did everyone need to go to the Library, and I found taking them there one at a time boring.  It got to the point that I made a special Dorm with most of the college amenities on-site because I found playing college lots so boring.

Cars are kind of nice, since they cut down on waiting time for the taxi, and they give you a boost to energy, which makes using multiple lots more practical.  They don't really change gameplay that much, though, since you can do anything you can do with a car with a taxi.  OK, except go to work late, but I try and avoid that because it feels like cheating.

The chemistry / turn-ons / turn-offs haven't affected my game much at all yet.  Maybe I'll see more with time, but for the moment I can't tell the practical difference between romancing a Sim who is turned off by my Sim and one who is turned on.  The new Ask interactions all seem like a waste of time, not to mention the problem with them being Romantic.

University added a new, challenging gameplay mode, and it added additional wants and double-locking.  The double-locking is a big deal, since a Uni grad can think about stuff like making a particular Best Friend without losing a long-term goal like 10 Best Friends.  Night Life adds a relatively easy, boring minigame (dates), and doesn't seem to add much to ordinary play.

I'm interested in hearing more details as to how you've found it improved the game, though.

 - Gus

I actually don't care for that aspect of the Phone Hack myself, but I've been willing to accept the "cheatiness" of Sims staying on the phone until they reach 100 DR in exchange for incoming phone calls being useful rather than annoying spam.  It's not quite a "cheat" since you can get the same effect manually by calling Sims over and over, but I prefer bringing Sims up to the 30-35 range on the phone and then inviting them for face-to-face interactions, rather than zooming right to 100 from the start.  For me the tradeoff has been worth it.

Which challenges put restrictions on phone calls, by the way?  I can't think of any myself.  But then, I've only played the "Bachelor Challenge," though I've considered doing "Legacy."  My problem is that most challenges I've read are dumb.  They're easy and open-ended.  It'd be nice to see a board devoted to challenges that were actually worth playing.


Don't you find calls where they just say "Why haven't you called me?" an annoying waste of time?  For popularity and romance sims, it seems like there are days when 10-15 nimrods will call to say that instead of chatting.


Uh, that sounds like a really bad thing to me.  Certainly if I were Pescado I'd think twice about changing the phone hack if it were to save Townies from the Cow Plant.

 - Gus

I'm worried about this too.  I haven't played long enough to know, though.

 - Gus

Actually, what I've frequently wanted was an answering machine for Sims I'm calling.  There's no way to know the work hours of a townie, and I have enough Sims now that I don't always remember their schedules, so what I want is for them to call my Sim back when they get home.  Of course, that requires that all incoming calls be useful so I'll bother answering, i.e. Pescado's PhoneHack.

 - Gus

I've seen that, I didn't know what it was.

Clearly our Sims are afraid of pulling a Twit of the Year.

...and Oliver has run himself over.

http://www.jumpstation.ca/recroom/comedy/python/twit.html

 - Gus

I haven't played enough to run into that, yet.  I liked the Romance Mod too, but mostly I what I liked was it prevented my Sims from getting crushes / falling in love with those damned flirting professors.  For the moment I've reverted to just never inviting professors over under any circumstances.

The Cow isn't much of a threat because everyone hates the Cow anyway, so his flirts always fail.

 - Gus

Awesome.

 - Gus

I tried the Matchmaker out a couple of times, and didn't like the results much.  I think she's best for Sims trying for the "20 loves" Want, or teenagers who don't know anyone at all.  Even so, you'll probably get a townie that you think is unattractive, regardless of what your Sim thinks.

 - Gus

What they steal is time.  Not ordinarily a big deal, but since Dates and Outings are timed, sometimes it's important.  Certainly one of the advantages of owning a car is that you have less delay changing lots on Dates / Outings.

 - Gus

I'm running a completely hack-less install of Nightlife for the moment.  It's a bit better than I expected since Maxis did fix some of the existing bugs.  Still, I miss -

1. Phonehack.  I don't really care about most of the features, but I'd forgotten how much I hated being called just to say "why haven't you called?"  I'm back to avoiding answering the phone unless I need it to call out for some reason.  The answer to "Is David available to talk?" is always NO now.

2. No Influence Obsession.  A Sim is a lot less interesting when all he wants to do is make other Sims talk to each other.

3. No Gismo Wants.  It's even more annoying than before, because the Sims now Want to purchase phones when they already have them.  Yes, I've heard No Gismo Wants works, but it's not on Boris's list...

4. Marriage Traditional.  It's annoying to have to choose between fulfilling a Want and keeping names the way I want them.

5. No 20K Handout.  One of the few mods that actually makes the game more challenging.

There are a lot of others I liked, but the effects were more cosmetic, like the Car Pool Fix.

The one I'm not missing is No Buskers.  Not because I like buskers, but because I no longer keep instruments of any kind around because busking or not, they still act like flypaper for guests and sims I'm not watching.  They start playing and then don't stop until they go into needs crisis or I forcibly interrupt them.  I simply want them to stop if their Fun meter is full.  Yeah, I know, that interferes with training Creativity, but I've always got computers and easels for that.

 - Gus

Very useful list.  Why is NoStrangerDance obsolete?  Are sims no longer autonomously dancing with zero-relationship sims?

 - Gus

Anyone know where to find reasonable replacements for some of the TV animations?  I don't mind SBN, The Yummy Channel, or even Kidz Tube.  What annoys me is the horrible gargling in "metal," "goth," and "rap" sections of SimStation Dance, and the boxing portion of the Sports Channel.  It's enough that I switch the channel, but it seems like everyone loves the Sports Channel, since they're constantly switching to it if I'm not riding herd on them.  And if you're holding a sports party, the only channel you can select is the sports channel.

 - Gus

I don't believe that's the problem, though Pescado could tell you more, since he as a patch here that fixes it.  On occasion when an elder dies, even if he generates a tombstone properly, he sticks around on the lot.  He isn't visible on the lot himself, but he is visible in the Neighborhood thumbnail, and you can move him when "Moving Out" with a Sim, or when you ask another Sim on the lot to "Move In."  He also takes up a slot, so you can only have 7 Sims on the lot if there's a not-quite-dead Elder.  Sometimes when you open a lot with an Elder in this state, he's a selectable ghost.

 - Gus

I've experienced the problem you describe, and it's not limited to Greek houses.  I seem to recall that the lot is permanantly waiting for one of your sims to move out, and that anyone else who tries to move out or use the taxi can't go because the lot is "stuck" that way.

I believe Pescado's "MoveOutBugFix.zip" hack fixes this, though I'm not sure if it will work with a lot that is already in this state.

 - Gus

Two reasons.  First, if the cafeteria worker has set off the sprinklers by burning food, the cafeteria has such a low enviro score that the sims complain regularly about it, which is annoying.  Influencing a NPC to clean up all the puddles is less work than cleaning it up yourself.

Second, it annoys me when my sims either have to use a filthy toilet or clean it themselves before using it.  It's more time-efficient to get an NPC to clean all the toilets if several of them are covered in radioactive green scum.

Typically I tell the cafetria worker to do it, since it avoids the 3 stooges routine of the target cleaner madly getting rid of food while the cafeteria worker rushes to replace it.  Sure, it costs 2500 influence, but who cares?  My sims generally have full influence meters all the time anyway.  Besides influence-to-clean, the only worthwhile influence actions are "do assignment" and "write term paper."  "Serve meal" would be OK if it didn't generate a plate full of useless Pepsi most of the time.

 - Gus

It appears that hello / goodbye kisses don't count as romantic interactions for jealousy.  You can kiss your lovers goodbye all you like in front of your spouse and s/he will never notice.

I've always found the oddest thing about goodbye kisses is teenagers who kiss goodbye but aren't ready for "first kiss" yet.

 - Gus