Musical Chairs

It’s a bit baffling, but Sims apparently choose where to sit by calculating 

1. comfort
2. proximity
3. presence of family

If there’s a more comfortable seat, they’ll go there. If the comfort is the same, they’ll go to the closest seat — keep in mind that Sims’ method to appraise distance is a bit counterintuitive for human players. If there’s another household member at home, they’ll try to seat close to them, no matter where.

Sinks used to have a similar issue until the Set Sink Type interaction was put in place — a Sim would use the toilet and trek across the house to wash their hands in the kitchen, as they would collect dirty dishes in the dining room and have an unexpected journey to the bathroom sink on the fourth floor suite.

Maybe a Set Chair Type is the “solution” for this? Lounge, Meal, Both? 

Or perhaps putting some glue on all chairs and programming their AI so that they *won’t, under any circumstance,* get up from the chair, unless commanded to do so or if it is absolutely necessary for the queued action to complete. Maybe the Sit command should necessarily override any autonomous self placement for all subsequent actions? “The Plumbob told you to sit HERE, so you’ll stay seated HERE until the end of time or your life depends on it, whichever comes first.”

Not having first-meeting-greetings animations would help, too, specially if a family is having breakfast together in the morning — it is utterly annoying that they sit down, start eating, then get up to greet each other just to sit down again in different seats (or rooms!) just because after X hours they apparently HAVE TO start any conversation with a custom animation. Ending this annoyance would not only reduce musical chairs, but reduce tardiness for school/work. 

(Sorry for the rant.)