How can we fix the emotion system?
We see it all the time, complaints about the emotion system, and rightfully so. Emotions as they stand are a mess. A great idea with not so great implementation. But how can we fix them? Saying "emoti...
Forum Discussion
I use Meaningful Stories to address a lot of issues with the emotions system. To give a small recap what it does.
Other improvements I'd love to see:
- "Fine" is turned to the default emotion rather than "Happy". You can get happy only if you do things that are truly happy, such as getting a promotion, making a new friend, witnessing the death of an enemy, completing a holiday, etc. rather than owning a nicely-decorated trashcan. That means a lot of the emotions are merely turned into boosters rather than an emotional state.
- A lot of the uncomfortable moodlets are turned into boosters for negative emotions instead such as hunger, bad weather, etc. This makes more sense: if your Sim is angry, lack of food would absolutely boost it.
- Emotions will linger even if their initial mood is gone. Your Sim, while may not be furious after your moodlets expire, can still potentially feel angry simply because he's still feeling angry. It doesn't always happen, but the variation is such a nice touch to have so you can predict less out of him, just like real emotions.
- It takes momentum to change an emotional state rather than flickering how you feel on and off like a light switch. You can't simply change your angry mood by walking into a bathroom and noticing how nicely decorated your toilet is, it has to build up and eventually overtake your dominant emotion.
Other improvements I'd love to see:
- The blending of emotions that Scobre posted is a very great idea. Fear should have definitely been an emotion in the game to begin with even if it does overlap a bit with Embarrassment, though "Disgust" overlaps a lot with Uncomfortable and Tense.
- Traits definitely need more of a focus rather than your Sim's current emotional state: their traits should dictate the intensity of their state rather than how the state does to the Sims. Reactions to particular commands shouldn't be universal, and a lot of the interactions emotional intensity should be dependent on their trait. For example, a Self-Absorbed Sim should get pretty angry if you pick a Mean interaction that insults their appearance or a Goofball Sim are better at laying off Mean interactions as they don't take remarks as seriously (but they can get angry if it's repeatedly done). Gloomy Sims would be harder to make happy in general rather than having a random moodlet dictate their personality.
