[Lovestruck] Rotational players, please beware "Romantic satisfaction decay"

After already having this "no decay" mod, I will remove the mod that prevents them from invading the lot, let them being "Lovestruck couples" until their satisfaction is fine, then put the mod back.

Or I plan to remove this satisfaction completely for inactive households by using the mod below.

[MOD] (per Request) Lovestruck: NO Romantic Satisfaction / System Triggers Only By Player Choice 
https://www.patreon.com/posts/109501560 

I may add "Sim Info Manager" to remove this satisfaction too, but I don't want to add many big mods for now, so I will try the no-mod method (just let them make love) first to see the efficient. 

With purity you find the infection. 

I'm curious. 

I don't own the EP so these updates are helpful. 🙂

This issue made me not want to add a new EP to my main save until I know every effect that will be added to my save. It's so sad that I have to find and use many mods just to stop stupid hidden additions in the game.

This is something people may overlook and believe that it's just an individual issue or a mod issue. So, I share it here in case this only happens to me.

(I have some mods too, not vanilla. But I don't use the mod that alters the game system too much.)

I get it.

I only have a few mods purely for gameplay and not for fixing any issues with EP's.

The mods I have get updated regularly and are base game.

I have thought about adding more mods for the bugs in the game. I don't want to wait for updates or depend on modders to fix the game. 

I am glad you are sharing your Lovestruck experience with everyone.  This is good feedback.  👌 

You're welcome!

Depending only on modders to fix bugs (or bad things that are game-intended) isn't good for the long term, but better than not if it helps me be able to play in peace. That's because some bugs exist forever without hope of being fixed, too.

You don't have to add every fixing mod, just the one that is important to you. Because some fixing mod will affect another part, just like what I wrote here.

Whatever we choose, just choose the thing we can enjoy the game in our way! 😊

P.S. Thanks for replying here. Reaching at least some people is worth spending time writing!

Okay, someone helped me to see the existing bug report. Let's vote it!

Romantic Relationships decay/become negative fast with no interaction | EA Forums - 4947168 

There is a kind of work-a-round in a vanilla game but it is tedious and people need to do this with all couples. Finish the aspiration Paragon Partner and that you get the reward trait. Then let the couple flirt until they are very satisfied then you can leave them. This process slows down the romantic satisfaction decay a lot, after some testing with a friend which plays on console their couples are still very satisfied after 4 weeks unplayed.

For the spawning couples the work-a-round is to give ever lot the single trait which comes with lovestruck. This will stop stargazing/romantic couples from swarm your community lot. The best way would be if the team just disable this gameplay feature for unplayed households and reduce the couple spawning a lot. It is not immersive, it is annoying.

Thank you for the information about the workaround in a vanilla game. But it's too much work to do with all the couples, like you said. And I think that adding aspiration reward to everyone will make this reward lose its specialness for some Sims who finish the aspiration themselves. So when I found the mod to remove decay, I chose to use the mod solution.

to give ever lot the single trait which comes with lovestruck. This will stop stargazing/romantic couples from swarm your community lot.

I forgot the existence of this lot trait. I haven't tried adding this lot trait myself before. Now I understand why a nightclub in Ciudad Enamorada doesn't have a swarm of couples. I will use this for another reason in the future, too. (Ex, lots that I want to see lots of single sims)

I think the game team should add a toggle for romantic satisfaction, like they can do with aging on/off. Because the method they use is so annoying.

For now, I will go to fix the romantic satisfaction of each couple in the game one by one. By using the UI Cheat Extension mod, you can right-click to change the value to neutral. If the mod can pause the decay, it's worth doing. (I didn't do this before because it will decay again.)

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Anyway, thank you so much for sharing the vanilla (unmodded) method. It will be useful for console players and someone who doesn't want to use mods.

Not related to the rotational issue but important information nonetheless- I have a very extensive post on Relationship Satisfaction in my "Waffle Explains It All!" series doing deep-dives into game mechanics.

...Partly inspired by people insisting theirs goes down way too fast, which is because they keep trying to shove incompatible Sims together lol

https://www.patreon.com/posts/116122721

Hello, thank you for your information that explains this romantic satisfaction very detail.

I know that your document doesn't focus on or relate to rotational. However, as I mentioned on the topic itself, the problem isn't "decay too fast", but "decay even in an unplayed household". This means ALL couples exist in the world (save file).

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It's so easy to fix this Relationship Satisfaction for such a few romantic relationships each day. It's harder to make them unsatisfied unless you try hard to make them bad.

But it has a big problem for someone who plays with many households together. They shouldn't have to enter every household per day or even per week to just make them do romantic interaction, to keep this satisfaction being positive or neutral.

And in my gameplay that I care about the background characters like premade Sims. Right now, I usually see the couples being sad like the screenshot above because they have a "very unsatisfied" status. Do I have to play all of the couples in the game every week just to keep them having a healthy relationship? And currently, there are over a dozen premade couples (around 2-3 couples per EP and recent GP).

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The point is, the game doesn't have something like they did for "aging on/off".

And even the aging on can work properly, Sims mechanics can't be smart enough to make NPC Sims keep Romantic Satisfaction. So, if the game can't be smart enough, just do it only with active Sims, please. That's my point on this topic.

Sadly that the Bug Report combines this "decay even in inactive household" together with "decay too fast". So I don't have another place to shout out.