Traits are broken and we all need to admit it

"friendlysimmers;c-16994215" wrote:
i fully disagree i clearly do not find anything broken in the trait system they are working perfectly find thats what i see as a player

Yes they work fine.

They are dependant on emotions to give sims personalities. And while that could work a little, the moodlets they give off have a value of +1. That's a total sham as the decor moodlet totally overrides them.

TS4 is as follows in regards to personalities:

emotions -> personalities interactions -> relationships

It should be:

personalities -> interactions -> emotions -> relashionships

I don't know exactly what's going on behind the scenes of the game, but that's what's currently happening. Currently, the traits give moodlets that (supposedly) impact personalities. It should be that sims have personalities that impact interactions which then trigger emotions and influence relationships. The emotions should further unlock interactions sims can do.

Here's an example:

The hot headed trait.

This trait gives a +1 angry moodlet. Does it work? Yes. Do hot headed sims get angry? No, because other happy moodlets go over the +1 value.

These sims are meant to get angry when another sims do any mischief interactions on them does it work? Yes. Do they get angry in the end? No because the moodlet is once again overwritten. Do they get negative relationship points from mischief interactions on them? No. Do the relationships suffer? No.

The hot headed trait should work like so:

Because these sims are hot headed, they should get negative relationship points when other sims do mischief interactions with them, as if they were mean interactions, which leads to the angry emotion. Not the other way around.


Interactions in this game are coded to fail based on emotion not on traits and that becomes a problem when the sims that are meant to have "signature emotions" (let's say) don't have them. Unlike in previous games, relationship status or value also doesn't totally affect sim's interactions. A sim with a low relashionhip can be hugged and they'll like it that wouldn't happen in previous games. In TS2 some interactions would appear ahead of time and as players we were suppose to know if sims had the right level of friendship or not. Same with mischief. In previous games risky interactions would have risky consequences and yes mood had a lot to say about it, but so did traits and personalities.

Serious sims in TS2 hated being pranked upon no matter what. And you had to have a pretty good relationship with them to play any sort of game with them, like the throwing a football interaction.

But I don't believe they have any plans to alter this or add better traits. Paranoid which was added recently is another miss fire.