I love you, my Despised Enemy

"Simalleyaile;c-17676361" wrote:
@Lielf

"LiELF;c-17670900" wrote:
I completely agree. Sims are in desperate need of alternate relationship conditions. It's like the entire enemy relationship was brushed aside in development and never revisited or finished. The essence of what makes the Sims games so engaging is not the happiness and success of the Sims, but the failures and frustrations that they have to go through to get there. Instant friendliness is boring. Having to force enmity on two sims is not the kind of challenge that players like me were thinking of when we asked for more. I want the challenge of finding a way to get an angry Sim to stop being angry at my Sim. I want to see vengefulness. I want to see resentment. I want to see a Sim hold a grudge until they get an apology.

LiELF - you have a way of expressing yourself that so often sums up exactly what I'm thinking! B) The majority of the time, I'm about as Rainbow and Lollipops in my game as you can get, but when I do delve into a bit more of the 'dark side' I'd like it to at least - like CAPTAIN_NXR7 says: "make sense". Is there anything in particular you'd like to see added to enemies -i.e. how would you like a sim to demonstrate being vengeful or resentful? I think holding a grudge could be as simple as removing the friendly options as I've mentioned, but as for what else would be fun, I can't think of anything. I do remember that sims used to steal another sims newspaper, but they're gone too.

Something I've noticed in the programming is that Sims have idle chats. These chats don't even contribute to relationships. Isn't that strange? I first noticed this while playing Discover University and saw that all of the students were hanging out and talking, so I let them since I wanted them to get their relationships up. After a little while I decided to focus in on a couple of Sims to boost them further, and my Sim had to introduce themself to the Sim they had already been talking to for two hours. There was no bar between them at all.

So first thing I think needs to happen is that these autonomous interactions need to change. Automatic hugging and friendly idle talk just needs to go. Let the player decide who their Sim wants to communicate with and how. Once these fillers are out of the way, maybe we can have some honest interactions. Sims won't automatically hug their enemies or sit and chat with them.

The next thing that needs tuning (and I'm not a developer so I'm only assuming these things are possible) is how a Sim reacts to another Sim and moves forward from there. This, I think, is going to take some deeper diving into Sim traits and personalities. For instance, take a Good and Evil Sim. They should, by instinct, argue and debate, fight, or not get along. This should be by default. But if the player wants them to somehow have a friendship, then the direction of the player's guidance should be considered by the AI and, with a lot of work, be possible. But the same two Sims should easily be able to be enemies or rivals. We should see them fighting on their own, making each other angry and poking each other as they argue. Same goes for any other Sims with an enemy status or relationship in the red zone. Once that status is in the red, the programming should dictate that those Sims do those autonomous interactions that are appropriate. Then if, say, the player decides to have one Sim try to make amends, they should be able to apologize, try to find common ground, or maybe have some new interactions like "empathize with their side" or "try to reason". These interactions should not always be successful to make it challenging. And there should be a "cool down" timer, like Sims 2 had that goes into effect after a negative interaction between red zone Sims. This way, you are forced to let them be, and when the time has passed, try to interact with them again (maybe the chance will be higher this time and even more if you apologize first.)

But while Sims are angry at each other or enemies, I think we need to see some petty and humorous activity. Coming by the house to kick over the trash barrel is always a classic. Maybe your Sim could get a mean, prank phone call from them or make one back. Get trolled on the internet or find out they've been slandered and have to protect their reputation. Be interrupted in public places when they try to make friends with other Sims and the enemy is there too. If the relationship is completely in the red, maybe they even get stalked a little. If we had doorbells, I'd say they could ring and run. Leave litter scattered on their front steps. Egg their house or steal their bicycle. Maybe the burglar activities could be transferred to enemy Sims behaviors instead. I can think of many, many ways that other packs could incorporate new vengeful activities. Sabotage, theft, social disruption. It would add a whole new challenge to the game that would make it interesting and engaging and it would all be completely optional to the player so those who wanted peaceful Sims could just keep making them friendly.

At this point, I kind of think we could use a "frenemies" Game Pack. It would be awesome.