This is something that's started happening fairly recently: a high level of rage amongst my neighborhood's denizens. This happens on Community Lots: A non-played Sim will play a prank on another one, or occasionally on a Sim I'm directing, and the situation quickly spirals into a poking/shoving match, culminating in a full-blown dustup. Sometimes the instigators are total NPCs; sometimes Sims I've created, but who are visiting the lot autonomously. While I realize there are no permanent consequences for the Sims involved in these brawls (at least I don't think there are), and while I can easily diffuse the situation if the antagonism is directed at someone under my control... it's getting to be more than a little tedious.
The Sims I've made aren't ALL complete jerks; I only create those personality traits in neighborhood "villains", who I would expect to behave accordingly, and about whom I wouldn't be posting here. Some of the NPCs might be... a certain Katy McGill seems to be involved in these incidents pretty often. Also, to my knowledge, I haven't installed any mods that would create these behavior patterns, but I could be mistaken. Are there mods that are known by y'all to do this? Might there be objects on the lots in question that would raise anger levels (drop fun levels?) to make this happen? Since the instigator Sims are not ones I'm controlling, I can't look at their motive bars. I suppose it's possible that some of my Sims have become corrupted and are acting out of character when I'm not steering their actions. As an experiment, I just recently visited the home of a certain gruff, but basically nice police chief of my creation, and Sim-Modded his "niceness" level up through the roof; we'll see if that puts an end to his involvement in these brawls... now he'll probably just end up crying a lot.
ANYHOW - if anyone knows of a particular bit of CC known to make Sims have fights every time my back is turned, I'd be glad to know what it is. I have 81 behavior mods installed, so it shouldn't be too hard to sort out in a binary sweep, if it comes to that.

This used to be my biggest issue at one time back when I played the game vanilla and I've gotten that Modded out and have a lot visitor comtroller to limit visitors when community lots being visited are small so they don't become overcrowded as that turned out to be the cause of most of that in my case.I've used THIS for ages to control visitors coming to community lots and a visotor limit is set with a teleporter shrub.There's also another option HERE at the archived Simbology and SIMBOLOGY SFS

I really do wish people would just link directly to a mod's page when possible. Less chance of said link becoming outdated.

Here's the direct link to the LVC which is thwe one I currently use.I used to use the Sonbology one for years and that indirect link was an accident because a RAM cleaner cleared my clipboard out bbecause I had it's auto clear enabled by mistake.

This is all vanilla game behavior! Sims tend to stay on the relationship path they're on, so positive relationships will usually have positive interactions and negative will have negative. Poke specifically has no personality restrictions, all sims will do it if their relationship is low enough. I think shove and fight are the same but I haven't looked. Evil witches can always poke good witches as well, that's neat! Visitor controller is definitely an option for you! But maybe you'd be wanting something more to control the inciting incidents like the pranks? Depends on how you wanna do it but there's lots of mods out there if you need ideas let me know!

Mean sims enjoy poking other sims so when you say "Are not complete jerks" how many nice points do they have?
If I want to mend a relationship quickly I use "Apologize Forgive" from Simlogical. This wipes out furious and sets the sims back to low normal. I only use it if it's like 'What the heck is going on I need to fix this situation.' times as it does feel a bit cheaty.

I oten use dhacked objects to get rid of bad relationships and Modded out most of those negative interactions at least being done autonomously and Modded others to be positive or no change.Lot visitors are limited and strict limits are placed on corner shops as those are very small and not meant for honging out at and just for a dash to the store for shopping or a quick meal out at the self serve kitchen.

I have a couple of mods that seem to have tamed this behaviour in my game.

One is Social Sanity Fixes.package, which I think is by TwoJeffs and was originally on Simbology.

The other is djsnocommunityornpcpranks.package by jFade (djs).

Between the two of them these mods seem to have made my Sims much more reasonable. Autonomous poking incidents are now rare.

I'm not sure where to get them now, but I believe all Simbology files are now on Sim File Share, and I think the djs site is still available for jFade's stuff. (The Simbology website is much missed.) Maybe someone else can provide links.

Also available is Squinge's NoAutonomousBadSocialsCollection.package available on insimenator.org. It stops nearly all bad social interactions. I seem to have had this mod in my game at one time, but I must have taken it out again. The other two mods seem to work well enough so that I don't need it.

I prefer to use mods to directly address the issue of bad behaviour rather than limit the number of Sims on community lots. I like my community lots busy, as this gives my Sims more opportunity to meet each other and make new friends. I also like to give my CAS Sims plenty of Nice points -- I seldom make a new Sim with less than four Nice points. It all helps to make the community friendly and accepting. I make no secret of the fact that my Sims and I have made our Veronaville into a welcoming neighbourhood, where I'd be more than happy to go and live with them.

^

Social Sanity Fixes is a godsend, thank you so much for reminding me about it!

I just checked and Social Sanity Fixes is already installed in my game as I though it would be from years ago when I started Modding my game.I have a link to the site where the Simbology files are now hosted in the SIMBOLOGY SFS under TwoJeffs.

Yes, much better to link to the Simbology SFS- it's great that people are bothering to upload sims files to archive.org, but unfortunately that version of the file doesn't state which EP it's for.

For the Simbology SFS that tadolson linked, you just have topick Twojeffs>Mods and then your EP, and the ctrl-f search to find the right SocialSanityFixes.zip for your game. I've been helping a lot of people with sims 2 on reddit lately, and quite often the problem is that they have mods from archive.org which turn out to be wrong for their game.

Thanks for all that info. I had kind of forgot about this thread until I witnessed a Sim of mine (with seven "nice" points) engaged in a brawl with a random NPC, at a community lot. If I didn't know any better I might blame the outlandish behavior on elevated caffeine levels (coffee obsession is another pet peeve of mine). Anyhow, I think I'll give those mods a shot. I appreciate your assistance.

The thing is, Social Sanity Fixes (by its own description) seems to curtail only autonomous positive actions:

Social Sanity Fixes
"Nerf's, but does not nuke the following social interactions, but only for autonomous actions by sims: Appreciate. Admire, Entertain. Dirty Joke, Play Punch You Punch Me, and Hug. Friendly Hug to make sims less stupid about choosing them."

There's no mention of pranks or irritations, which are what tend to lead to shoving contests. Am I better off using Squinge's methods then?

I don't like the poking sessions either. I don't want to completely restrict people from doing it for variety and dynamic, but find it weird that they find poking the most attractive thing to do repeatedly once it becomes available. There ought to be a cooldown preventing them from doing the same action repeatedly. They "know" they've done it already because the relationship gain has diminished.

[QUOTE=AndrewGloria]

Also available is Squinge's NoAutonomousBadSocialsCollection.package available on insimenator.org. It stops nearly all bad social interactions. I seem to have had this mod in my game at one time, but I must have taken it out again. The other two mods seem to work well enough so that I don't need it.

http://www.insimenator.org/index.php/topic,9756.0.html

Well... after a thorough search through all of Squinge's stuff on Insimenator, I FINALLY found all the "no autonomous _____" mods, and sadly, the vast majority of the links get a "404 - Not Found" response. SO, kind of back to square one, I guess. I did find some other mods of Squinge's that I'm going to use, among them one that prevents Sims from rushing over to watch a fight in progress (which is also often annoying)... but none, sadly that will stop the fighting in the first place. I'm thinking the Visitor Controller may actually work best in these situations, once a belligerent NPC has been identified - I suppose I'd just have to ban them from ALL community lots. Either that, or put SimBlender plants on ALL my community lots, so I can use the "teleport" option to control Sims engaged in fight-inducing behavior, and get them to knock it off. But that's an awful lot of rigmarole. Such is life in the Simverse.

Unless, of course, you'd be willing to send me a copy of that package you were talking about...

Update -
After another poke-fest broke out at one of my quasi-home-business lots, I went back to the site and managed to find Squinge's "No Autonomous Socials Collection EP8 New Alt Ver(10-17-08)". Note it says "updated for EP8". Does that mean it won't work unless I have EP8... or is it good for anything up to and INCLUDING EP8? Because I only have up to Seasons, and going through the list of Squinge's EP5 mods, there's nothing corresponding. All of the behaviors it purports to control are ones that exist in my game, so I'm assuming I can use it. But if it's configured for EP8 (whatever that is), might it not crash something? I suppose I could test it out. What's the prevailing logic?

I'm pretty sure there is an earlier version of Squinge's "No Autonomous Socials Collection" on insimenator.org, as my highest EP is EP3 - Open for Business, and I know I had it in my game at one time. See my post #8 above. However it looks like I subsequently must have removed it again, as it's no longer in my game. This suggests to me that I may have had problems with it. However the two mods I mentioned in that post seem to have made such behaviour sufficiently rare to satisfy me. The EP8 version of Squinge's mod probably does require EP8 to work properly, so it's likely to cause you problems. If you want to try that mod, I suggest you try searching through Squinge's mods for games up to EP3. An earlier version of that mod definitely exists -- I had it in my game.

Generally the two mods I mentioned do keep most aggro out of my game, but I still run into the occasional Sim who seems determined to cause trouble. Only yesterday a poke-fest developed between a boy and a girl at Bopperz, my little downtown club for straight teens. The boy was Donnie Bough, a CAS townie that I added fairly recently. He has three Nice points, which is quite mean by the standards of my game. The girl was Ginger Newson, who is not one to put up with that sort of thing, so of course she poked him back. I was afraid it was going to degenerate into an all-out fight, but fortunately Ginger autonomously saved the situation by going into the female toilets. Donnie, unable to follow her there, went and found something else to do. On the whole I'm quite happy with that. My game, especially Veronaville, undoubtedly is tinged with utopia, but let's say it's a work in progress. We have a long way to go till we achieve perfection, but, when we recall how bad things used to be, my Sims and I are confident that we're getting there. There is a pleasant excitement about living in a place where we know that today is better than yesterday, and we can hope that, if we do our bit, tomorrow can be better still!

I think I remember that the reaction to poking is somewhat backwards in that mean sims will just cry and nice sims will retaliate. I believe there's a mod to fix that, but I don't remember where I saw it anymore.

Well, I'll keep looking... You're right, I should check out Squinge's mods for EARLIER than my latest EP... duh. I didn't think of that one.
I used to notice this happening mostly on Comm lots where there was a coffee bar, (not that the caffeine caused the poking; it just caused the Sims to stick around longer, leading to more interactions). SInce I installed the mod that limits pranks on public lots, it's happened instead on my Roman "home business" lots. I don't have OFB, so I use the auto-teleporter shrub to create an artificial influx of clientele for my taberna shops - storefronts that often lined the streets on the first floor of apartment buildings. If a poke-fight breaks out there, I just have one of the home Sims call over one of the combatants to distract them, or just say goodbye to them, effectively kicking them out of the lot. But it's a minor pain to do this when it happens all the time. If it's a recurring theme with a specific NPC Sim that I don't mind altering (Katy McGill, for instance), I might just use the Personality Adjuster on them to raise their niceness quotient. But, if it's a character that I created to have specifically unfriendly traits, I don't like doing this. So hopefully I can find maybe a Nightlife or Uni version of the aforementioned collection from Squinge. Hopefully it actually covers fighting behavior, or pranking anyway, which often leads to fighting. The "nice" auto-socials are annoying, but easier to tolerate.

Shouldn't the Outgoing-Shy personality scale also have a bearing on how a grumpy Sim behaves toward others? I know plenty of totally unfriendly real people who don't go around poking strangers. One can be misanthropic without being belligerent. AND, if a Sim were grumpy and lazy, maybe they should be likely to insult and argue with other folks, but not poke or prank them... not worth the effort. Grumpy, lazy and SHY, they should just plain ignore other Sims. Venn diagram time...

OKAY... I downloaded the "No Autonomous Bad Socials" collection, which includes all the fighting behaviors. HOWEVER... it also states in the title: EP3 (OFB) REQUIRED. I have EP1, 2, and... 5. I just never bought OFB or Pets, for whatever reason. Do you think it will work?

If you have anything later than OFB, you have all of the OFB resources, too.