Hello.
We released a PC/Mac patch today (version 1.59.73) that may have fixed this issue. If this issue is still occurring for you on PC/Mac after updating your game, let us know.
I am guessing that this is by design- especially given the tone of the pack (curses, backfires, magic being a bad thing to play with). Using an infatuate spell should always be a 'no-no' (as should other 'spells'), so this is likely "as intended". The implementation is poor, as always, and questionable. There has long been other issues, like child sims (whose parents are famous) being offered to model the "WooHoo Wear" clothing line. Of course this is beyond 'inappropriate', but EA/Maxis finds it (disgustingly) acceptable. So, the spell backfiring on the teenage sim seems to be exactly as standard (inappropriate) Maxis/EA gameplay. Hopefully one day they will stop.
I highly doubt this is by design considering there is no other way to get teens and adult sims, or blood relatives to have a romantic relationship without mods. There used to be bugs where teens could end up with a romantic relationship with celebrities they didn’t know well, or that you could send bees to romance a blood relative, but those were quickly patched out of the game when they were brought to the devs’ attention. This kind of thing is very different than the sims 1 having a vibrating bed and dancers coming out of cakes. This 100% feels like the spell was brainstormed and tested with only YA and up in mind, and the only questionable/inappropriate part was meant to be any underlying ‘consent’ issues, but since the sims is all about controlling sims and there’s no unrequited relationships like the sims 2, I personally don’t see an ethical difference between the player telling a spellcaster to use infatuate on two appropriate sims vs the player telling the two appropriate sims to flirt until they can kiss.
@siladrisyou pointed it out yourself (consent). And, yes, ethically, I would view forcing two sims on each other (or a player making their sim do actions- such as repeated harassment until the other sim 'caved') as a serious issue. I have played enough of TS4 that I can tell you that there is unreturned flirtations. I often see sims out and about and when one flirts the other holds up a hand, or is embarrassed, or other dismissals of the advances. I have also watched Game Changers on YT that have used their sim to forcefully pursue another sim (even after the other sim indicated "NO" several times). So yes, there is unrequited advances in game.
Rejected advances are different than unbalanced relationships. In the sims 1 and 2, one sim could have a crush on a sim who didn’t feel the same way, or just have different levels on the relationship bar, so sim a might have a 100% relationship bar with sim b but sim b only has a 80% bar with sim a. In the sims 4, if sim A has a 100% relationship bar with sim b, when you switch to sim b, they’ll also have a 100% relationship bar with sim a. But even with 100% friendship and romance bars, sims in the sims 4 have a chance to reject romantic advances if their mood is low or something.
When Maxis uploaded all those new sims on the gallery for the 5th anniversary of the sims 4, they wrote in their household descriptions a weird love angle between a few of the sims where like sim a liked sim b and disliked sim c, but sim b liked sim c and didn’t care about sim a, and sim c didn’t care about either of them, but that relationship dynamic is impossible to accurately represent in a modless game because if you make sim a have a romantic interest in sim b, sim b will reciprocate it because that’s how relationships work in ts4.
But none of that has to do with this bug so I’ll let cinrict go back to getting input lol
