This thread gave me lots of food for thought. Of course it would be unrealistic and controversy producing for the game to decide who is attractive and who is not. However, why not let the PLAYER decide. I'm sure that when you play a Sims created or born, you have an opinion on his/her attractiveness or lack of. Why not let the player determine the degree of attractiveness of a particular Sim through a slider. Zero (default) would be neutral whereas plus or minus would make them more or less attractive. This wouldnt offend anyone worth offending and you could have a imaginary world where out of shape balding men with big noses are the hottest tickets around J (its only the real world if these men also happen to be rich). As pointed by the poster above attractive sims would gather more attention than less attractive one. I think there already is an attraction factor (Zodiac signs), but this could add to it (but not supersede it) I agree that Sims are rather neutral on their own. The game would be much more interesting if the sims were more autonomous in personal relationships. What would really be interesting is if you could set this degree of autonomy for each sims. For example you could have a variable (determined through a slider) that determines how much a sims is aggressive in pursuing the other (or same) sex. A slider pushed to the max would allow a sims to initiates flirts, kisses and woohoos on his own. Imagine the havoc an aggressive romance sims could cause if left unattended. I think these autonomous actions should be determined by their aspirations. If they want grilled cheese sandwiches, then they should make it themselves. If they want to star gaze, ditto. Seems to me the sims are like a whole bunch of hopeless cases sitting around and just hoping good things will happen but never doing anything about it J I think a large part of the fun of the Sims is when unexpected events occur. I find sims are a little too static on their own. In some other cases I just itch to turn off autonomy because they are driving me nuts! Have you ever tried to do any kind of interaction with a tired toddler thats telepathically shouting to every sim in the household? I wanted his mother to tickle him a little before bed, to fulfill both their aspiration but it proved impossible with every adult in the household single-mindedly determined to put the baby to bed. It ended up with the father literally ripping the baby out of the mothers arm. I mean it. Her arms stayed at a funny angle till she took a bath. Probably the warm water relaxed her muscles J
Mm, interesting idea, but I'd prefer it if Sims decided each other's attractiveness by themselves instead of it being an absolute standard established by the player at the beginning - this'd be more realistic (beauty being in the eye of the beholder and all) and more chaotic and fun. But I completely agree with your comments on autonomy. The game is so much more fun when Sims direct their own lives, but they can only do that to a very limited degree currently, and it'd be fantastic if they had the AI and force of will or whatever to be able to conduct their lives with the level of competancy necessary not to kill themselves, but still to wreck havoc entertainingly. At present they are pretty static like you say - it'd be wonderful if there was a little more autonomously-generated chaos (that didn't lead to them dropping like flies).
As I mentioned somewhere in my long-winded post I wouldn't mean for this attractiveness factor to supercede everything else. I imagine a sort of weighted system where attractivenes to another sim would be determined by the sims's sign, current hygiene, mood, aspiration level and physical attractiveness.
Sorry I misunderstood, that sounds a lot better than my original interpretation . But I still think that physical attractiveness should be up to the beholding Sim. For instance, the 'Hygeine' factor would probably be more of an issue for Neat Sims than Sloppy ones - the 'Physical Attractiveness' factor could be similarly interpretable.
Yup that makes sense. Maybe serious sims would be less affected by attractiveness than let's say romance or popularity sims. I'd also base it on the relationship score. Love is blind as they say
D&D Romance or Is That a Jousting Lance in Your Pants or Are You Just Happy to See Me Kristalrose revealed: I got to know my husband playing Dungeons and Dragons back in the 1980's in High School. I'll never forget it: He sent his charector charging into certain death to try to save my charector. That's how I knew he liked me. Very cool. I run a D&D game every Friday Night and have been an avid gamer since I was 11 (over 20 years now, yes I'm a huge geek. I am a geek guru, His Royal Geekness to you!). And that was one of the healthiest ways I've seen a gamer show affection in game (I told my wife, she laughed and said "Awww, how sweet!") Also, on the attractivenhess thread (sorry to shift gears) I think that does not work. Setting a Sims attractiveness seems unrealistic. A person may think they are attractive to everyone only to find other people who think some aspect of their physicallity is a total turn off (such and such body part is too big or small; egad that person has tattoos gag me; can you believe what that freak is wearing?) Perhaps what would be better is setting a personal setting for things a Sim finds attractive (gender; big noses; thin or heavy builds because some people like some junk in the trunk;certain color eyes or hair; etc) and when two Sims meet who hit each others attractiveness zones they hit it off faster than others. It would be complicated. Just a thought.
Yes, yes, yes, oh Kilted One. This is exactly what I was thinking when I mentioned a willingness to sacrifice some graphical bling in exchange for more complex gaming ... but then without the graphic detail many nuances of the extra detail in the hame play might be ... well ... lost in the fog of lo-level graphical detail. On the other hand some things seem entirely possible, For example, teens might congregate in community lots. Like all, or almost all, the teens in a hood might be likely to be found in a park or a coffee bar or somewhere with a video game between the hours of 8-11pm. There, typical teen behaviours might be seen. eg small groups of girls discussing (gossiping about) a boy ... the target of this gossip to be red-faced with embarrassement! (And, of course vice versa)
The Geek Hierarchy And a fellow PvP reader! Woot. Anyway, I don't think attraction on basis of physical appearance is really possible, because physical attractiveness based on very specific and nit-picky things like facial features isn't something that can be effectively reduced to quantitative data. For example, say, the shape of someone's eyes may look good when combined with a certain set of facial settings, but look weirdly out of place or plain ugly when put on another face. An option for the user to customize a Sim's attractiveness leanings will also be required, and implementation of that would be horribly complex and difficult. I like your idea on stuff like teen sims hanging out with each other Mirelly. Teens just don't act enough like, well, teens.
Brunch Away! The Geek Hierarchy is awesome. I've been a fan of Brunching Shuttlecocks for ages (and their spinoff The Self-made Critic, who is hilarious).
Brunching Speaking of Brunching Shuttlecocks my favorite page was The Web Tycoon Board Game. My favorite square: Your Russian-made mainframe runs out of gas. Go back 4. Hilarious.
