I guess I tend to think of it as casual chatting in line at the grocery store (no names exchanged and you’ll either never see each other again or not remember each other if you do) or actually introducing yourselves and planning to keep in touch or at least recognize each other around town to speak again.
The automation only ever does the former. While I wouldn’t want it to put every single passing townie into the relationship panel, I can see how it might make sense that if the conversation lasts longer than x amount of time, or happens with an invited guest at a party hosted at your home lot, you might want it to progress to the latter.
My sim's world pretty much revolves around my households and other than mixologists, I would much prefer the world to be empty as I have no use for npcs other than as meals for my vampires, and they could survive just fine on plasma packs. And honestly, could do without the mixologists too because they are useless. Other than Thorne, I don't think there is a single npc that I or my sims would miss. ok well maybe Agnes too lol.
