Now that we've been shown the new romantic and sexual orientation system in the latest stream I wanted to talk a little about it in this thread (the settings are in the gender section, therefore I thought it would fit here). We haven't yet been able to try it for ourselves, so I'm basing this solely on what we were shown on the stream.
First of all, I think it's great that this is introduced! I'm not at all against these settings in any way.
I just wanted to say that the settings aren't super intuitive, and I wanted to explain why. I also wanted to explain how not having an explore option for sexual orientation, only for romantic orientation, is both non-intuitive and a bit odd in general.
When a sim is created they will get a romantic orientation that is unticked for interest in male and female sims, and their romantic orientation is set to exploring. They also get a sexual orientation (woohoo / mess around) that is ticked to being interested in both male and female sims. This is how the game treats romance and woohoo right now, so there aren't any changes to how sims behave when they're first created.
The new settings makes it possible to change the sims romantic and sexual orientation. If the exploring option is set to "no" it means that their orientation won't change. So, if a sim has their exploring option set to "no" and has both male and female unticked for romantic orientation it means that the sim is aromantic, if they have one of the options ticked it means that they're only interested in that sex/gender, and if they have both options ticked it means that they're interested in any sim.
If the exploring option is set to "yes" it means that their romantic orientation will change over time, depending on which sims they interact with romantically.
So far, so good.
Then we come to the sexual orientation setting.
When a sim is created both options are ticked. Compare this to how the romantic options are unticked. This is how sims behave in the game right now, so there isn't an actual change here. But, what you pick here, in the sexual orientation (woohoo / mess around) setting, will never change unless you actively chose to change it. Sims can't explore their sexual orientation. They can only explore their romantic orientation. This means that when you untick both it means that the sim is asexual, if you untick one option it means that the sim is only interested in one sex/gender, and if you leave both ticked it means that the sim is interested in any other sim. So, we won't be able to play the story of a sim who explores their sexual orientation, we will only be able to play the story of a sim who explores their romantic orientation.
Also, it isn't very intuitive that both options are unticked for romantic orientation and both options are ticked for sexual orientation. Either everything should be unticked or everything should be ticked, when a sim is first created. I understand why it's set up this way, it's because sims can't explore their sexual orientation and therefore unticking both would mean that they would never be interested in woohoo with any sim. But I think what is going to happen is that a lot of simmers will tick both the romantic options on their new sims (meaning that the sim starts off with romantic interest rather than starting off just exploring), simply because they think their sim is aromanic otherwise, while this isn't actually what the sim is when the explore setting is set to "yes", and both options unticked actually means that the sim starts off as a blank sheet. But when it comes to sexual orientation, sims can't start off as blank sheets, they have interest in any sim and it will always stay like that unless you decide to change it yourself.
I think sims should be able to explore both romantic and sexual orientation, not only romantic orientation. This would also open up to have everything unticked, which is more intuitive than to have half of it unticked and half of it ticked.
Another thing I was thinking about is what counts as romantic and what counts as sexual.
Kissing, and especially deep kissing, like for example the "making out" option (that sims can only do while sitting on a sofa or similar), is very much a grey area when it comes to asexual and aromantic peoples' view on it. If we ask asexual people who aren't aromantic (talking about real people here, not sims) some would say that they absolutely can engage in it and that they don't see it as sexual, while others say it's sexual and they don't want to engage in it. If we ask aromantic people who aren't asexual, there would be big differences there too, some people think it's romantic, while others think it's sexual. For many people it also depends on what type of kiss.
I'm assuming that, in The Sims 4, all the kissing interaction count towards the romantic orientation, and not the sexual orientation. This would mean that a sim who has their explore option set to "no" and has both the romance orientation options unticked and both the sexual orientation options ticked, would not want to engage in kissing interactions at all.
I therefore think that kissing should be counting for both romantic orientation and sexual orientation.
Another thing I was thinking about is how "Try for baby" will work. There are many asexual people (talking real life again, not sims) who want to conceive children the "natural" way even though they would never engage in such an activity if it weren't to produce children. (Are all these terms family-friendly enough for this forum?)
I therefore think that "Try for baby" should be counting for both romantic orientation and sexual orientation.
There are probably other interactions that are also in the grey area, like "risque question" or whatever it's called.
To make it easier for us simmers to know which interactions count as romantic and which count as sexual there could, for example, be one pie menu for romantic interactions and one for woohoo-esque interactions. In the romantic pie menu there wouldn't be any woohoo options and only the regular "Try for baby" option, and not any of the other "Try for baby" spots (but the sims could still pick another "Try for baby" spot if there isn't a bed available, as usual). The woohoo-esque pie menu would have all the woohoo options and "Try for baby" options. Kissing options, and other "grey area" options, would be in both pie menus.
I was also thinking about the romance bar (in the relationship panel). I think we need two bars, one for romance and one for woohoo-interest. The woohoo one could be purple (like the woohoo icon).
TL;DR
I think:
- That sims should be able to explore their sexual orientation (not only their romantic orientation)
- That all romantic and sexual options should be unticked at the start (only if the statement above is true), meaning that sims start off as a blank sheets
- That kissing should count as both a romantic and sexual activity
- That "Try for baby" should count as both a romantic and sexual activity
- That other interactions in the "grey area" should count as both romantic and sexual activities
- That there should be separate pie menus for romantic and sexual interactions (kissing, "Try for baby", and other "grey area" options should be in both pie menus)
- That there should be separate relationship bars for romantic and sexual relationships (pink for romantic, purple for sexual)
