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SheriGR's avatar
SheriGR
Hero
11 months ago

Re: [ARCHIVED] Romantic Relationships decay/become negative fast with no interaction

Added my 'Me Too' and 'XP'. I have two couples that are 'amazingly compatible', their likes, attraction, and relationship are a great match, both couples are married and in the same household. Their relationship bar remains at 100% or close to it. None of them are arguing, it's a good and close family household. They're active professionals, and it's a very busy and interactive household. When they're not at work they are on the lot most of the time., and I monitor them reasonably closely. I always have autonomy on.

I can be busy taking care of things with the household and their daily life then, sometimes shortly after having notice about one or the other of the couples being satisfied in their relationship or having been through a close romantic time with a full romance bar, then I can suddenly see one or both of them have a tanked romance bar. And sometimes when this happens it is so much work to get it back up and topped of... or at least around 50% (romance). In this case it's possible I'm just not noticing and it went down slowly, but it seems the romance bar sometimes empties more quickly than I would expect.

After a tanked romance bar, I've even had them (both couples) do something that normally raises the pink bar nicely like cuddle and chat for hours or share a sweetheart box... then instead of watching the pink bar rise I have had occasion to see the romance bar go up and down with red... or simply increase and get more and more red. If I hammer away at increasing the romance bar I can move them past the issue, but it's frustrating and discouraging, especially since one of the couples is my 'legacy' couple that I've played for years together. They've always gotten along great, have a lot in common, and I even went through the whole process of having them 'get to know more about each other' (apparently again - and 'discover' the things they have in common) since Lovestruck came out. This is not always happening for me... Just sometimes.

I do enjoy so many of the new additions with the pack, but it's frustrating when this happens.

I have all packs, am on Mac, and I never use Mods or CC.

Edit: I just had this occur again and I took pics of the process. The couple was doing fine, having regular a day and relating well and I was seeing romance with a zero romance bar now. So, these are screenshots of two different attempts in a row to 'cuddle in bed'. They were pleasantly chit-chatting the whole time with green hearts and 2++ rising in the air with interactions and chats while the red bar appeared and rose. When they stopped the second time I took a screenshot of both of their recent 'moodlet history'. Of course it looks like it's then occurring to them to have additional interactions that are helpful I can hammer away at this and get them in the pink eventually, but this is a lot of work. It would make sense that it be this hard if they were fighting or there was another reason that made sense, but there isn't. Hope this helps.

1st try pic number 1 and 2...


2nd try pic number 1 and 2...

Their moodlet history after...

5 Replies

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  • Bra1nBlast3d's avatar
    Bra1nBlast3d
    Seasoned Veteran
    11 months ago

    @SheriGRthat moodlet history looks like it contains the moodlets for sims being "very unsatisfied" in their romantic relationship. What is the romantic satisfaction level between those two sims?

  • SheriGR's avatar
    SheriGR
    Hero
    11 months ago

    @Bra1nBlast3d I was having a great deal of difficulty tracking their satisfaction and 'up-keeping' them, plus having romance tank. I tried a number of things with them, and if I'm very attentive and babysitting of them I can manage or recover from these ups and downs. It also helped a when I had them 'get to know' each other in repeated angles... as if they didn't already know each other through tons of Sim years and generations of kids and life... and they were very well paired in likes. It just shouldn't be that much work with them. 

    I finally had a friend ( @CGrant56 ) tell me that he was seeing (& heard this from others) relationships/decay behave with more difficulty in maintaining if they were married before the pack versus after the pack. I think he said he has even split up then re-married at least one couple as a workaround. So... in my new/current save/household I tried another workaround he mentioned... to get one of the Sims the 'Beloved' trait (the reward for the 'Friend of the World' aspiration). Since I'm playing a busy household working on very different goals currently, I just cheated in the reward trait onto the husband of the couple. I'm going to be testing it out to see how it goes tor me. If it helps, I'll either keep the trait until the pack gets tweaked (if and when that happens), or if I want to keep the trait I may just have the Sim complete the aspiration associated with it - gradually). The 'Beloved' trait keeps all relationships at the positive level the Sim had gotten them to, and the relationships do not decay. I will put directions on how I cheated it in in my game in a spoiler tag, in case anyone here wants to experiment with this also:

    Spoiler
    1. Open your game save and enter the household with the Sim.
    2. Make sure the Sim is home and select their thumbnail pic so they are the active Sim.
    3. Open the Cheat popup box. ( Press Shift+Control+C )
    4. Enable testing cheats. [ Enter the following in the cheat code box…
    testingcheats off (press enter):  (Note: testingcheats false also works) ]
    5. Next, enter the following in the cheat box...
    traits.equip_trait Trait_Legendary (press enter)"
    6. you should now see the 'Beloved' trait in this Sim's Simology > Traits list:


    Note: To remove the 'Beloved' trait later, do the above steps but enter the cheat traits.remove_trait Trait_Legendary instead.     
  • SheriGR's avatar
    SheriGR
    Hero
    11 months ago

    @Bra1nBlast3d This fluctuates, but currently, with full relationship bar and romance bar:
    On the top one: neutral and very satisfied for one; neutral and fine for the other

    On the bottom one, unknown attraction level and unknown satisfaction level.

    However, I believe that these all change depending on the recent corresponding interactions, if I'm remembering correctly. Bottom line to me is, I am unwilling to need to monitor this - my favorite, most used, and longest term couple - that heavily. I'm just not interested in playing that way with long-term marriages.

  • MadameNordica's avatar
    MadameNordica
    Seasoned Ace
    10 months ago

    Listen, I understand you don't work for EA, I want to say that my sims pre-lovestruck were always maxxed with romance and friendship, soulmates, best friends, the whole 9 yards. As soon as love struck hit, even tho they have AMAZING compatibility and are even satisfied in the relationship and attracted to each other, the romance bar disappears overnight. Being expected to go on 3 dates a day is completely unrealistic and breaks immersion in the game. Who has time for that and actually holding a job?

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