Sims Enhanced Pack

Why this project?

I believe it's important to find a balanced middle ground between extremes in life. I apply this to games by thinking of our strategic choices. Imbalanced games with one dominant strategy like Tic-Tac-Toe rarely keep our interest past childhood, while balanced games with a variety of strategies like Go and Chess challenge humanity for thousands of years.

I also believe games should be intuitive to learn, and challenging to master. Rewards should also match the time to complete tasks like getting mood bonuses - their "cost effectiveness."

This mod improves the fun, balance, intuitive gameplay, and challenge of the Sims 3.



1. How? - Balance

Players quickly discover the dominant strategies for each of these parts of the unmodded game:

• The Moodlet Manager can reset needs for any sims.
• Ambrosia eliminates the challenge from dealing with mood.
• Never Dull gets rid of the challenge of interactions between sims.

These are dramatically more powerful than other choices for needs, mood, and interactions. The SEP mod balances the power of these strategies with alternate choices to make the game more fun and challenging.

In addition to solving those obvious issues, I carefully adjusted other moodlets and rewards to make overall game balance a little more complex, exciting, and thoughtful. This approach differs from other mods which simply raise or lower the amount of total mood our sims require for happiness, leaving the fundamental balance issues untouched.


2. How? - Intuitive to learn, challenging to master.

In addition to balance, this pack makes gameplay more intuitive. If you ask people what's important to lead a happy and healthy life, most would probably respond with a list like this (in no particular order):

• Food
• Sleep
• Sex
• Exercise
• Bathing
• Brushing teeth
• Friends
• Love
• Low stress

I placed more emphasis on those in the Sims. If your sim has low mood, simply think about what we do in real life! This also means we achieve happiness with a variety of tasks, which is more challenging than doing just 1 overpowered task.



3. How? - Cost Effectiveness

A 2-hour task should logically give twice the reward of a 1-hour task. This is the basic meaning of cost-effectiveness.

For example, in the unmodded game a Great Date takes lots of time and energy to accomplish, but gives just +15 mood for 3 hours. Dropping a newspaper it a recycling bin gives +20 mood for 3 hours. This obviously does not make sense. Why would a 1-minute activity give a better bonus than a long, planned-out date with a romantic interest? The cost of accomplishing these tasks does not match their rewards. The SEP mod improves this. Going on a great date is one of the most fun and lengthy things we can do in the Sims, so I increased the duration of its mood bonus to 2 days. This means we can go on a date once every few days to stay happy, just like in real life.

Another example is exercise. Most people recognize physical activity as an important part of a healthy life (it's intuitive), we can do it from the start of the game (think of early-late balance), and it takes a decently long time (cost effectiveness), so I increased its reward. I set it to give a bonus after 30 minutes of regular activity, or 20 minutes on professional equipment like a treadmill. The bonus requires at least 1 point in the Athletic skill to unlock.

This means average sims can get a big benefit from a short workout each day. The best way for these sims to exercise is an at-home treadmill or bench - this takes just 20 minutes out of the day. Poor sims can jog, or workout in front of a TV/Stereo, but these cheap options take slightly longer.

Sims who want to meet friends or push athletic skill for their career can visit gyms. Gyms increase the rate we learn athletic skill by +50%, which makes it good for long term workouts. (this mod fixes the bug where unmodded gyms lower athletic rate by -50%).


Example

Let me show you how Alice and Bob reach Elated mood in a fun and realistic way with this mod. Alice is a workaholic law enforcement officer on the super spy track and high Athletic skill. Bob is her outgoing, charismatic, city mayor husband.



After a great date with Bob the previous night, Alice wakes up well rested and woohoos with Bob. They share a hilarious and flirty conversation, then Alice gets some breakfast, and heads to the gym for an hour-long "quick burst" workout to improve her athletic skill. She hops in the gym shower, brushes her teeth, and heads off to work.

Following their morning woohoo and chat, Bob shares a breakfast with Alice. She encourages him to start exercising, so he visits the stadium for a quick Athletic class to unlock the skill. He returns home for a short 20-minute workout on their home treadmill. Bob then takes a shower, brushes his teeth, and calls some rich neighbors for a political fundraising party. One of them becomes his friend, improving his happiness for a full day.

With this mod, the game is more intuitive to play - just do what you might do in the real world! You no longer have to look up strategy guides to figure out how to play well. The game is also more challenging to master. We do a variety of fun and realistic tasks to lead a happy and healthy life, instead of just plopping sculptures everywhere.

Here are details of how the activities in Alice and Bob's days helped them achieve Elated mood:



Miscellaneous

I adjusted the mood bar text so it matches which part of the bar we're in:



Lifetime rewards and traits are in the same file (LTRs actually are traits), so I included a small fix which reduces the random chance of bad traits for newborn NPC townies. Getting random traits that do not work together is bad enough, without further penalizing townies with numerous horrible effects. This makes the game more fun by increasing the likelihood we can find decent spouses for our sims.


Credits
I hope this helps make the game more enjoyable for the community. I encourage you to freely use my work in your own projects, change it, anything you like. You can do so without my permission. All I ask is you credit this or other work you use, and do not charge money for my work. I want to help the community improve the game we love, and name recognition is not important for me.

Have fun!


Additional Credits
I used S3PE to create this pack.

Compatibility
This pack improves moodlets/traits/rewards the base game, Ambitions, Late Night, and Supernatural expansions, but I do not believe it requires those expansions. I do not have the other expansion packs, so settings in those are left unchanged. This is a straightforward override pack that does not use scripts or core modifications. The pack changes the following files:



Customization
It is very easy to personalize this pack for your preferences. Let's say you want to change the Rubber Ducky moodlet to give +15 mood for 6 hours.

1. Open
   1. Open Thalassicus_SEP_Mood.package with the Sims 3 Package Editor.
   2. Click the second xml file, which has the text "<buffs>" in the top right preview.
   3. Right-click the xml file and select "notepad".
2. Edit
   1. Press Ctrl+F to search for "DuckTimeFun".
   2. Change EffectValue from 20 to 15.
   3. Change TimeoutLength from 300 to 360.
   4. Save and close the notepad file.
   5. Click "yes" to commit the changes to the package file.
   6. Save the package file.
3. Play
   1. Delete the "Cache.package" files in this folder: C:\username\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3
   2. Start Sims 3.

Details
The BalanceMods_spreadsheet.zip file included on the downloads page lists the changes made in this package for easy reference - useful if you decide to change the mod. I copied the numbers in text form below as well: