Lifestyle issues
I know I'm not the first to point out that the people person lifestyle is weirdly easy to get. So far, lifestyles seem to have the kind of problems people thought they would. Some of them happening too much too often, others not happening enough or at all. I actively tried to get Hungry for Love on one of my sims and haven't even reached In Progress, but I got People Person out of nowhere?
You could hear this feedback and tune lifestyles endlessly, like whack a mole, the same as what's happened with autonomy and overtuned interactions over the years. I'm sure that would help, but I don't think it quite addresses what is one of the problems here.
I read one post where someone was talking about a Loner sim of theirs getting People Person out of the blue. A Loner! It doesn't even make sense. Now maybe you want this to be a sandbox, so it doesn't make sense to completely cut off a Loner from being able to have a People Person lifestyle. Sure there's story potential in strange mashups like that. But people need some control if they're going to have potential for such an odd, potentially personality-breaking combination.
What I'm getting to is that I think what lifestyles are missing most is the ability for a given sim to actively choose not to pursue certain lifestyles. And on the flip side, the ability to choose to pursue them, not just through a vague list of behaviors that is supposedly going to fulfill the requirements, but as a manner of focus that makes the lifestyle more likely to attain and less likely to decay over time. This could save a lot of trouble with whack-a-mole. If a lifestyle is a bit overtuned, people could just shut off pursuit of an undesired, overtuned lifestyle for a particular sim. It would still be somewhat organic or entirely organic (if desired).
I know there isn't much precedent for going back and changing pack content, but I don't think it's too outlandish to imagine that these were confined to a pack in part as a way to experiment with improvements to personality. So if you choose to do anything like this for base game, please consider some controls on the player end. More controls than just "remove a lifestyle you don't like after the system has already failed you, so it can fail you again." Or at the very least consider more closely the possibility of absurd combinations like a Loner easily getting People Person.
You could hear this feedback and tune lifestyles endlessly, like whack a mole, the same as what's happened with autonomy and overtuned interactions over the years. I'm sure that would help, but I don't think it quite addresses what is one of the problems here.
I read one post where someone was talking about a Loner sim of theirs getting People Person out of the blue. A Loner! It doesn't even make sense. Now maybe you want this to be a sandbox, so it doesn't make sense to completely cut off a Loner from being able to have a People Person lifestyle. Sure there's story potential in strange mashups like that. But people need some control if they're going to have potential for such an odd, potentially personality-breaking combination.
What I'm getting to is that I think what lifestyles are missing most is the ability for a given sim to actively choose not to pursue certain lifestyles. And on the flip side, the ability to choose to pursue them, not just through a vague list of behaviors that is supposedly going to fulfill the requirements, but as a manner of focus that makes the lifestyle more likely to attain and less likely to decay over time. This could save a lot of trouble with whack-a-mole. If a lifestyle is a bit overtuned, people could just shut off pursuit of an undesired, overtuned lifestyle for a particular sim. It would still be somewhat organic or entirely organic (if desired).
I know there isn't much precedent for going back and changing pack content, but I don't think it's too outlandish to imagine that these were confined to a pack in part as a way to experiment with improvements to personality. So if you choose to do anything like this for base game, please consider some controls on the player end. More controls than just "remove a lifestyle you don't like after the system has already failed you, so it can fail you again." Or at the very least consider more closely the possibility of absurd combinations like a Loner easily getting People Person.
