[Lifestyle] "Hungry for Love" an Explanation
This lifestyle has frustrated many people trying to get it or keep it. It has been posted several times about not working, being broken or needing to be overhauled. In my game my one Sim could sometimes maintain it and sometimes not (and no matter how much they seemed to do romantic interactions) but I always seemed to have to cheat add it to start with. So I decided to look at the internal files and figure out what the heck is going on. I am an amateur modder, but I tend to be able to figure out tuning files (once I get use to a games files).
Let's talk about The Romance Lifestyles, just like many other lifestyles there is polar opposites:
Single and Lovin' It, is basically a very slowly earned by default lifestyle; earned simply by not being in a relationship, and otherwise is only—by chance—can be stalled by reading romance novels or watching romantic tv. You might earn this, even if you don't want to—eventually—as long as you aren't capped for lifestyles. If you don't want this lifestyle, you only need to be in a relationship—plain and simple.
Hungry for Love, from what I can see... romantic interaction don't seem to play much or any part of it at all. What people are probably getting confused or frustrated about is how you earn this lifestyle. Chance! from what I see the only way to get this lifestyle is a success in chance from 3 different actions. 2 are from just reading romance novels/watching romantic tv, which if you trigger successfully (once or twice) daily you'll gain this lifestyle fast enough and maintain. The other way to get a chance is a passively if/when you wake up, and are in a romantic relationship (less sleep with traits/potions/coffee/etc. hurt this). Autonomy is probably not going to help you, if your Sim doesn't have the Romantic trait and autonomously reads/watches romantic media (and in some cases, some people play households without TVs making it even harder)—this lifestyle is a lot of work.
Let's talk about The Friend Lifestyles:
Now compare to Close-Knit and People Person, these are easy enough to get one or the other (or change if you really want to). It is a simple set up of 1-3 friends = Close-Knit, and 4+ you get People Person. Not exactly much depth (and the amounts aren't great) but easy enough, and again these are other default earning lifestyles—that you will eventually earn. Only way to avoid is 0 friends or are capped for lifestyles.
Conclusion: it isn't broken...?—it just wasn't set up great. What is misleading was the romantic interactions counting towards the lifestyle, and may only be used for unlocking purposes. But enough of it works, so that is probably why all posts complaining have been pretty much ignored? IMO, yes, it should be tweaked to overhauled. I have been working with the tuning files to make this lifestyle better and testing like crazy, because as-is, leaves much to be desired XD
