Sims Breaking Up

"Bettyboop55;c-16486236" wrote:
@igazor do you think Bridgeport is, therefore, art mimicking real life ? We all know which particular part of California Bridgeport is modelled on and Late Night did introduce celebrities to the game so why shouldn't sims there be the same as their more famous real life counterparts. In which case that is very clever programming. It also would mean the wishes panel brings the wish to break up or meet someone new more often. I can't say I've noticed this but then I don't particularly like Bridgeport. What I do notice is Matthew Hamming turning up everytime I have introduced a new female sim into the game :)

Maybe. Some of this goes back to what was being discussed earlier on this thread, how we see and relate to things that we see in our games a bit differently from each other. I don't even see Bridgeport as being in California, I see it as more of a northeast coast US city and it snows a lot there in sim winter. Some have said the layout reminds them of Pittsburgh, except without the industrial element, others see NYC or Boston in it. Starlight Shores makes me think of CA.

But the general instability of relationships and lack of interest in long-term romance almost have to be by design, mimicking and then exaggerating what some developers must think life in the Big City is really like. I can tell you from experience that not all major American cities are quite that way for the majority of their residents, but I think most players know that already. ;)

Funny you should mention Matthew, though. He's kept to himself for the most part in his very nice house in my game, but he did eventually form a relationship with one of the losers...uhm, not very far evolved residents in the Drama TV household. She's pregnant now, and I added a crib and baby stuff to Matt's gorgeous house with the expectation that SP will move them in together when the baby arrives. Not seeing any instability with that relationship--yet. But he'll be an elder soon, so he doesn't have all that much time left to be acting like a free-wheeling younger adult with no responsibilities but his own needs. Even though of course some elders will do that anyway. :)

"alexjoanroww;c-16486432" wrote:
@igazor Makes sense. I've played Bridgeport multiple times and it's definitely like that. Most, if not all the original couples, really lack chemistry. Probably also why they never have children on their own through story progression. Even though sims in sims 3 tend to not do on their own in general, I've had it happen in quite a few of my games in Sunset Valley. I can name at least 3 times off the top of my head.One time, a sim I wasn't playing with had 2 children with 2 different women. No one ever had a single baby in Bridgeport on their own. Not even family oriented sims.

I got that too at first, even with NRaas SP in control. I think part of the problem is that the sims in so many worlds, including the already coupled up partners, just don't seem to like each other very much yet. Or, as you said, the chemistry just isn't there with the few Bridgeport couples like with the two sims who immigrated in whom I was describing.

Whatever it was I changed to "fix" that took things a bit too far. The stable couples, the unstable ones, and those who are not really couples at all are having way too many babies. Occasionally SP notifies me that it cannot find anyone further to make pregnant and I should do something about that. The world is pretty full as it is, so I usually make a rude gesture at the screen, glance at the demographics that MasterController provides, and just shrug it off. But soon I will have to cap the population and/or move some households out because there won't be enough room for everyone.

@igazor I am unable to comment on relationships in major American cities but imagine they are not that different from UK cities :) My assumption that Bridgeport is modelled on places on the West Coast just shows my ignorance of American cities. Still we can agree we all have different experiences with this gang depending on what we do or do not believe our sims capable of expressing.

"Bettyboop55;c-16486512" wrote:
@igazor I am unable to comment on relationships in major American cities but imagine they are not that different from UK cities :) My assumption that Bridgeport is modelled on places on the West Coast just shows my ignorance of American cities. Still we can agree we all have different experiences with this gang depending on what we do or do not believe our sims capable of expressing.

Oh no, not ignorance at all. I've heard others say that Bridgeport reminds them of CA and I think I've also heard Portland, OR or maybe it was Seattle mentioned. The reason that I see an east coast city in it is that I have lived my entire life on the east coast or close enough to it, at least in the same time zone, so that's just my perspective. :)

I looked on the wiki, and it said that Graham Nardone, who I assume works for EA, said that it is loosely based on Pittsburgh. So there you have it.

Every time I played a game in Bridgeport, Kai Leiko moved out of Lola Belle's house the first or second sim day. Then one day, maybe a year ago, I saw him and Lola being romantic with each other, so I did some checking, and found that while their relationship with each other was very high, Kai and Lola's live-in personal trainer, Moxie Logan, can't stand each other. So he was moving out because of Moxie. Ever since then, whenever I set up a new game in Bridgeport, I use NRaas SP to make sure that if anybody moves out it will be Moxie, not Kai.

One of my two current games is in Bridgeport. Lola and Kai became engaged within a sim week or two, but went for a few more weeks without getting married, though they had at least one baby together. Then I got a notification that they had broken up. So I checked their moodlets. Neither of them had the betrayed moodlet, but according to their map tags, thanks to NRaas tagger, I could see that they were both upset. It seems they may have had a bad argument. I was disappointed, because I thought that for once they were actually going to get married. :'(

I'm actually embarrassed over how much attention I've been playing to the Bridgeport locals, the ones whom I would never play myself. For most EA sims in most other worlds, I usually just don't care so much. In my game, Kai lives in the sparse looking cabin under the bridge. He became Lola's toy boy, though. I arranged a regularly occurring money transfer between them because he has poor job performance and would go bankrupt on his own otherwise. Their relationship never tanked, and they are still Romantic Interests even though I cut off the flow of money some time ago as he transitioned into his full time film career and began making enough to support himself properly.

Matthew and his pregnant girlfriend still like each other but just broke up for no reason I can figure (throws rule book out the window, hope it didn't hit anyone). I give up. :D

"Bettyboop55;c-16486512" wrote:
@igazor I am unable to comment on relationships in major American cities but imagine they are not that different from UK cities :) My assumption that Bridgeport is modelled on places on the West Coast just shows my ignorance of American cities. Still we can agree we all have different experiences with this gang depending on what we do or do not believe our sims capable of expressing.

I've read that Bridgeport was modeled after the San Francisco area which is California. I think it fits very well although the whole celebrity scene would better fit the LA and Hollywood area. Starlight Shores does seem to be based on that area of California.

"cwaddell;c-16487038" wrote:

I've read that Bridgeport was modeled after the San Francisco area which is California. I think it fits very well although the whole celebrity scene would better fit the LA and Hollywood area. Starlight Shores does seem to be based on that area of California.

I've read that before too, but the wiki says otherwise. Still, I've always treated it like it was in California, until my current game there, when I decided I wanted all of the seasons.

Bridgeport seemed a lot like New York City to me when I played there and saw how couples kept breaking up and switching partners.That's just like a larger modern city where everybody is always in a rush to get partnered up to be married and often marriages turn out badly and they end up finding they didn't get the right one and have to break up later on.

The stereotype of a Big City is that singles are NOT in a rush to get partnered up for more than short-term and that romance is just a passing whim, when it's convenient. Not that singles run around trying to marry everyone they meet at a bar (though I suppose some do, they probably have smartphone apps for that now...hey, whatever makes them happy).

As for New York City in particular, I am here to tell you that you cannot paint all 8.6 million of us with the same brush. There is far too much diversity here to do that with any great meaning. I've had people from out of town/other countries say they could never live here because everything is open 24 hrs and it's all too distracting (and expensive), but it's not really like that in most parts of the City that the tourists wouldn't see much of.

One of the reasons I see NYC in Bridgeport has nothing to do with that, it's the expensive over the top homes on the other side of the bridge with the cool views of the cityscape. Some parts of New Jersey over one of the bridges and the tunnels here are kind of like that. But I'm sure other cities have areas and views like that as well.

The game likes to exaggerate, wherever it gets its stereotypes from, and most players I've seen from Big Cities like this one are fine with that. :)

As someone who's spent a lot of time in San Francisco, I have to say that Bridgeport doesn't remind me of the city at all. I mean, yes, there are docks, but that's true of any city with a shoreline, and both are on a peninsula, but then again so is Pittsburgh in a way (the three rivers making a natural boundary and all that). But aside from downtown office buildings and a few new developments on the east side, SF is overwhelmingly row houses, not apartments. Somehow, even with all the people around, you can still lose yourself completely in any of several parks and forget you're in an urban area at all. And the city proper is built partly across the spine of the north end of a mountain range. Driving is hell on a stick shift, but as you crest over a hill and suddenly catch sight of the water, the view is absolutely spectacular. Even now, it still takes my breath away. To me, Bridgeport captures none of that, although it seems like a fine city in its own right.

As to the other point, most of the big-city stereotypes I'm familiar with are about having fun and avoiding long-term attachments, romantic or otherwise, for as long as possible. Of course there's far too much variety in any real city to get away with broad generalizations, but I think that living in a vibrant place with so many different things to do and people to meet lends itself to exploration and the constant expansion of one's horizons. It makes sense, then, that many young people would lean towards giving themselves a chance to see what's out there before settling into predictable, if happy and comfortable, lives. And, of course, the whole point of a fling is that it's supposed to end.