I get that. As I've replied before to another poster, I appreciate the idea of these things just being thoughts or fleeting (or not so fleeting) desires that a sim can choose to act upon or not. The part where it kind of falls apart for me is when they wish to have several loves at once or woohoo with several different sims and such. I feel like that's harder to interpret in the same way.



Sure- but Grilled Cheese is entirely made as a joke aspiration, and a "secret" one at that. And the pleasure aspiration is all about enjoying life in the moment. There's nothing too off to me about it, at least not nearly to the same degree.
I'm playing a pleasure sim currently actually, and although she has family secondary, she seems to only roll pleasure wants- and interestingly they're never juggling or jumping on the couch kind of wants. Most of the time she wants to go buy new clothes, or dine out, or just visit community lots.. I'd honestly take the juggling over that! Maybe I unintentionally trained her to want to go out all the time.. haha

All my sims want that lately and idk what I did to cause it. I've got a good mix of aspirations in my hood (no Grilled Cheese, but everything else is represented) and I think maybe one sim (one of the Knowledge sims) hasn't rolled that want but the rest keep rolling it over and over. It just seems weird, because I played for years and never used to get it at all.

Personally, this is the one aspiration I wish they'd left out in favor of something more useful. I mean really, how many times does one want to see all Grilled Cheese related wants on their sim's panel?... so ridiculous. Like how difficult would it have been for them to give us an aspiration relating to art, gardening, culinary, medical or I don't know... anything else other than Grilled Cheese.

I remember being excited when FreeTime came out and hearing about a new aspiration, but as soon as I clicked on Natasha Una's household and saw her wants panel and the Grilled Cheese aspiration, I was sorely disappointed.

Agreed - also playful knowledge sims, mean romance sims, shy fortune sims - the more variety, the better - I don't take personality into account except in cases where the sim is born with a really weird one (no nice points or something like that).

I also used to see the Romance aspiration as "evil", as even Maxis enforcing the stereotype on the it (after all, Don Lothario, who is the poster boy of the aspiration, is modeled after a certain generic soap opera villain archetype, even though several simmers portray him in a much more positive light). However, after a while, I thought that there's several ways to interpret a aspiration, even more so if you combine them with secondary aspirations:

A maried romance sim often rolls wants to kiss or woohoo with their spouse and can live a happy, monogamous life if those wants are granted, and you can interpret those wants to kiss/woohoo other people as their intense sex drive or just boredom with their marriage (as is the case of Daniel Pleasant), urges that they can control if they want to. If you give the family aspiration as a secondary for a romance sim, it will enforce even more the idea of a "hopeless romantic" instead of a "cheater bastard".

The Grilled Cheese aspiration came with Nightlife first and it's uselessness was due to it being the result of a failure on the ReNuYuSenso Orb (that aspiration reward that changes aspirations), although it fails even as a failure, as the wants from the Grilled Cheese aspiration are so easy to fullfill that you can get your sim aspiration meter to Gold/Platinum and use the ReNuYuSenso Orb again in just a couple of minutes.

Never realized that! I've been playing The Sims franchise off and on since the first iteration and am always amazed when I learn something new about anything from Sims 1, 2 or 3. Guess I dislike the Grilled Cheese aspiration more than I thought seeing as I did not even know (or clearly forgot) which EP it originated from... and sadly I always bought the Prima guides along with the EP's, and that surely would have had that info in it.

besides "training" sims to roll different Wants and besides changing their Aspiration, Freetime's secondary Aspiration might be another way.

also, I heard of mods that get rid of jealousy and there are hacks that can turn it off (or on).
insimenator is one of the hacks.
not sure where the mods are.

My teenage Romance Sim Gordon Cornton has long wanted to share his views on woohoo and love and it seems to me that this thread might be a good place to let him have his say. I have to stress that Gordon's views are his own. I don't share them, and neither do most of my Sims. In fact I don't think any of them are quite as extreme in there views as he is. But there might still be a fair number of teenage boys around, who might quite like the sound of his ideas. Anyway, I'll let him have his say:



Hi Everybody!

Rules for woohoo!? I don't think so. Woohoo should be spontaneous. I mean if I like you and you like me, and we both want to do it, then we should do it, and it's nothing to do with anybody else. Woohoo is fun! I reckon the world would be a lot happier if there was a lot more woohoo.

All the great philosophers and religions tell us that we ought to love each other. I reckon the more love there is in the world, the happier a place the world will be. Now woohoo is the ultimate expression of a Sim's love. So for me as a Sim, the very best way I could demonstrate my love for Simkind, would be to woohoo with everybody in the neighbourhood. Now I admit I haven't even begun to try to do that yet, but I'm still young, so give me a chance! But, as a start to my life's work, I tried to woohoo with all the boys around my own age in our neighbourhood. Well maybe not quite all of them, because there are a few boys like Andrew and his boyfriend Julian, who have this quaint idea about what they call "true love", and only want to do it with each other. (And Andrew has this even quainter idea that he should wait till he's older, or even till he's married!) So I didn't try to woohoo with them, because, contrary to what some people say, we Romance Sims aren't trying to hurt anyone or wreck anyone's lives. We're merely trying to share our love with them and make them happier. And there were some boys in the neighbourhood, who called themselves "straight", and thought that boys should only do it with girls. I don't know what that's all about. But there were a fair number of boys who were up for it, and me and my brother loved them and woohooed them and had fun with them. And for a while everything was great and everyone was happy. But then some of them started harping on about what they called faithfulness. Some of the Knowledge boys called it "fidelity" -- just to show off what fancy words they knew. And then they started getting mad at me, just because they saw me kissing or flirting with another boy!? The long and the short of it is that I've been in more fights than most boys in our neighbourhood. I've even won quite a few of the fights. But winning those fights did nothing for me; I didn't want to fight any of those boys -- I only wanted to love them. I wanted to kiss them, and make out with them, and woohoo with them.

Well, I think this "faithfulness" thing is one of the worst things in the world. I mean, if you see me kissing another boy, that doesn't mean that I don't love you! There's no logic in that at all! Of course I love both of you! I have far too much love to give to just love one Sim. Please let me live my life in a way that let's me express all the love I have to offer.

We Romance Sims suffer far too much verbal and even physical abuse just because we try to love our neighbours. It's time we were appreciated. Far from abusing Don Lothario in Pleasantview, they ought to put up a statue of him, to commemorate all the love he has shown, and the pleasure he has given to the ladies of the town.

Yours with lots and lots of Love
And hopes of Woohoo,
Gordon Cornton

Dear Gordon Cornton,
If your Watcher had just installed a mod to fix the broken jealously system inherent in the game's code, you would never have had this problem in the first place; "faithfulness" only applies to committed relationships. That said, Don Lothario was engaged (a committed relationship) and therefore would still receive (and deserve!) all the abuse he ever gets.
Sincerely,
Another Watcher

For me this is the key - I don't have this particular mod but it's the mindset I play with.

Not everybody wants to be committed to somebody - not just in the Sims, but in real life. Some people don't want a relationship but enjoy companionship and will romantically interact with others as and when they want/crave.
I don't see this as 'cheating', I see it as a string of interactions in which the Sims are aware that this is a sexual/companion interaction rather than a life commitment.

The game's jealousy settings don't allow for this, of course, but I manage to play my Romance Sims this way pretty satisfactorily. They love their families, they have career goals, they enjoy hanging out with their friends. They may also want to WooHoo 10 people but not necessarily commit to any of them, and I respect their decision.

For me, serial monogamy..YES! The times I've been married I was totally faithful. And in other relationships one of the first Talks was my ideas about as long as we wanted to "be" with each other, neither of us should "be" with any one else, but if you want to dip your stick in another place just let me know, no hard feelings, see ya.

But I don't hold my Sims to any such standards. That's one reason I love ACR; I set some to be faithful so they don't succumb to the Lotharios.

When it comes to real life, I agree with grammapat, even though I haven't been married but I believe that "commited relationships" are supposed to be exactly that: Commitement and no cheating. I think cheating can be very boring because it leads to an endless cirlcle of lies and having to remember every time the previous lie can be tedious (yeap! I am a very bad liar, in general, so I avoid it ).

The sims, though, are an other topic! When I started playing the sims 2, I came from the sims 3 (it is still my "first sims-love" and you know what people say about the first love!) where I don't play rotations because of the broken story progression and the broken attraction system where every sim is attracted to everyone and anyone is fair-game. My married sims don't have relationships with anyone else outside the household and noone is "allowed" to cheat or even know a sim outside the family.
In the beginning, I tried to play the same way in the sims 2 but I soon realized that this is not the right way to play this game and really enjoy it. At first, though, I never used neither the "Romance" nor the "Popularity" or the "Pleasure" aspiration. All the premade sims with those aspirations had to change to Family/Fortune/Knowledge! And... my game became pretty boring because I, also, played with free will off! This changed after watching some Let's Plays and I saw how many awesome things I was missing!
Today I have, finally, realized that if sims (just like "real" people!) want to cheat, they will anyway and it is not just the Romance sims who will choose that road. I am conviced that it is not only the Romance aspiration that leads to cheaters and, definitely, it's not only ACR to blame for that. I have ACR in my game and, except from some very rare occasions where I "friendzone" some sims (for example, whenever I play in Riverblossom Hills, I always "friendzone" Andrew Martin with the elder ladies he and his son live with because the game itself calls them "his surrogate aunts" in his bio and yet Maxis thought it's OK to create some drama and have them fall for each other, which I find just... ewww!), I play with its default sets (and I enjoy it!).

Bear with me for some moments to explain my point of view: I watched a Let's Play Veronaville. The youtuber made it back in 2015, her channel's name was Whitey28 back then but a while ago she changed it to DramatiSim. She plays all the premade hoods (these days she is playing Season 2 of Pleasantview!). Back in 2015 she didn't use any mods or CC, only some in-game cheats, so the game was Maxis-vanilla only. The first day of Antonio Monty's househod, Antonio accepted an invitation for a Downtown-outing by his sister, Bianca. Bianca had also invited the Summerdreams, Kent Kapp and the elder Montys. At some point, when the youtuber was trying to see if Antonio was attracted to any of the townies female sims, Titania (who, of cource, was not the "active" family), litterally, "grabbed" Kent Kapp and made out with him. Titania, as we all know, is a Family sim and during the previous Summerdream's rotation, Oberon had proposed marriage to her and she had accepted. So, Titania was "engaged" to Oberon when she... attacked poor Kent who, at the time, was in a relationship with Bianca! Unmodded game, Maxis settings, no ACR and an "uncontrollable" (lol!) "Family" sim cheated on her fiance right in front of him!
Proof no.2: In my own game, I started a mini-mega hood with Riverblossom Hills, Riverside and Downtown. I was playing the Wan household and, on their first day, the "welcome wagon" came. The "welcome wagon" were Morty and Stella Roth and Betty Goldstein. At some point, ACR tried to "send" Cleo to get her "first kiss" from Morty. Morty rejected her, despite the fact that they have 2 attraction bolts! So, a Knowledge sim managed to resist the... "wicked" powers of ACR! I was so, freaking, surprised by that and I have a new-found respect for Morty that I didn't have in the past

Really sorry about necroing this thread, but I felt that it would be pointless to make a whole nother topic for something so similar.

So I've recently started playing with ACR again and this topic sprung up in my brain again. I was playing vanilla for a while, and really enjoying having different interpretations of different romance sims. In fact, I had Nina and Darren get married and my plan was to let Nina flirt with others only if she rolls a specific want towards someone. They are now in their elder years and Nina has been incredibly faithful. Most of her wants were either generic wants or directed towards Darren. I thought it was really sweet.

But then I added ACR, and I was playing the recently widowed Daniel Pleasant. I took him to the park, and in the background, to my dismay, Nina started flirting with some random townie she was friends with. On one hand, I wasn't entirely opposed to this happening; she is a romance sim, and she had been faithful for a long time..
But when I think about it, I have the feeling I wouldn't have been able to play something like this out at all if I had ACR in my game from the beginning. It seems to treat all romance sims the same and that makes me a little sad.. It seems to treat them all as poly/cheaters..

I like that ACR adds more autonomy and drama, but I would also like there to still be some romance sims who are more faithful than others. I'm just not sure how to handle this. I know that you can change a sim's individual ACR settings, but I don't know how to do so organically.. Having had a lot of experience with this iteration of Nina, it wouldn't feel too far fetched to me to make her fully faithful or very low autonomy, but I feel like that's only because I haven't had ACR in that save from the beginning. I have a feeling if I did, Nina would have been completely different. And choosing a setting like that for a sim I've little experience with feels inorganic.

You guys who play with ACR, do you just let all your romance sims be like that? Or have I just been unlucky in terms of variety? I've followed a fair amount of romance sims in my save with ACR for a little bit and they all seem to be more or less the same in behavior and in their tokens. No jealousy and no commitment whatsoever, ever. So basically, fully polyamorous. I'm okay with some sims being like that, but every romance sim being like that is a bit excessive for me.

I've added ACR in a new town just starting out with only two couples and turned autnonmy off globally until I figure out settings as it was the safest option as I learn about the Mod and I might also add Inteen for keeping relationships going with one aged up before the other or to allow marriages to include teen couples or teen/adult couples though they still have to wait until both are adults for woohoo.I'd adust settings in my BACC to have mostly happily married couples who don't cheat on each other though there can still be a lot of drama from the town's residents dealing with a drought or flooding and even having a harsh winter.

I think, this fits nicely to the discussion.

@CosmicEcho

I play in longer rotations and with longer lifespans, and so by the time I move to another household I know the sims a bit. But I also usually start with ACR off. There are certain couples I really dislike that EA set up to be together (I'm a contrarian, tell me two sims are fated to be together and no, no they most definitely are not!) and prefer to see who else they might be happier or fit better with, especially since I play in a megahood with the premades generally, and there are sims who have better matches based on background and shared experiences in other neighborhoods then with the set-ups they're shipped with, but they'll gravitate immediately to those set-ups with ACR, before I've had a chance for them to meet sims who are better fits.

Oh my gosh, someone else is like that, too?!

I'm pretty sure everyone is like that! It's not as if the developers show any sign of considering the chemistry mechanics when they set these couples up; and even when the chemistry's decent the backstory implies things a lot of us don't want to play.

I kinda like the Rom/Fam pairings, and I wish there was a mod that would kinda nuke the attraction penalties at least a little, maybe at least lessening the penalties between Romance and Family aspirations.

As an offset, you could put the romance aspiration as a secondary, to keep it from dominating their personality.

The attraction penalty won't matter once they're properly in love. One thing that works very well is to give each partner the other's primary aspiration as a secondary. Since Family and Romance are the two most ardent aspirations, they should be generating plenty of date and woohoo wants to fulfill with each other and drown out the inappropriate ones.

I like to play this dodge with the Ottomai, and I've never had a Peter yet who had any significant urges for anyone but Samantha. In fact, I recently took an elder Peter and Samantha to a homemade vacation destination, which included the Lust Shack, full of x-rated CC that could be used autonomously, and took them there, thinking they could take up swinging in their old age. Normally those things have a powerful draw, but Peter and Samantha wouldn't even go inside, staying outside pushing people on swings, using the bubble blower, and romancing each other. So I took this as a sign that the "woohoo three sims" wants they kept rolling were straight-up fantasy which they used to fuel their own relationship, with no desire to try it for real.

What is this "attraction penalty"? (Sorry, I just don't understand.)

If you go to Cyjon's page (http://cyjon.net), he has a Study of Chemistry which breaks down how boltage is figured. Factors include star sign, aspiration, turn-ons/offs, relationship status, and personality. All of these have numeric values that they add or subtract from the total chemistry store, and they function in relationship to each other. Romance gets +35 for Romance and Pleasure, +0 for Fortune and Popularity, and -35 for Family and Grilled Cheese. Other things being equal, Romance/Family is one of the least chemically attractive combinations. This can be offset by the other factors. Relationship strength does not add or subtract numbers, but affects the baseline.

Once you've grasped the basics, this is fairly easy to manipulate, without having to track specific numbers (which I am incapable of doing). You just remember which aspirations and starsigns are most compatible when pointing sims at each other, and you can easily fine tune the turn-ons and turn-offs if you want a certain couple to be more or less passionate.