Romantic interactions from non-partner sims rejected

[Omicr0n]

Before I begin the tedious task of starting a new game and ripping out mods to determine if there's actually a problem and what it is, perhaps somebody could elaborate on the romance mechanics in this game, because it's been like 10+ years since I've played Sims 3 unmodded, and only a couple of months since I started playing it again. Trying to search for this info now is a pain because trying to find Sims 3 info just results in tons of results for Sims 4 that you have to wade through.

 

I figured if I gave my sim the Commitment Issues trait he'd always be receptive to flirting, even after getting a girlfriend, but this is currently not the case in my game. He was always receptive with romantic interests and non-romantic sims, but then as soon as I decided to make another sim his girlfriend, it's like a switch was flipped and now he rejects romantic interactions from anyone that isn't his girlfriend or a romantic interest. I even tried giving him the Flirty trait, and the Unfaithful trait from KW on the off chance that it also affected romance in some way, but nothing has made him receptive again. As soon as I drop the girlfriend, he goes right back to accepting romantic interactions from everyone.

 

The issue is entirely one-sided as well. If I turn on his autonomy again, he's perfectly content with queuing up romantic interactions with other sims which they accept, and even sims that have partners themselves will accept the flirting, but then as soon as they try to flirt with him he rejects it. This makes me feel like it's a bug with the Sim, or possibly a mod conflict, but the mods I've tried removing so far haven't made a difference. I haven't tried removing KW yet because that's more involved and means starting a new game.

 

So can anyone tell me if this is normal SIms 3 behavior? Or do I have an actual issue in my game?

[TheLadysGhost]

Try flirty trait. Also irresistible and eye candy. I think first is both trait and reward, second is reward.

[Omicr0n]

On 10/8/2022 at 11:55 AM, TheLadysGhost said:

Try flirty trait. Also irresistible and eye candy. I think first is both trait and reward, second is reward.

I had already tried Flirty but there was no difference in behavior. I tried Irresistible and Eye Candy as you suggested, but those also didn't change anything. I think Irresistible and Eye Candy are more for attracting additional attention though. The problem is he's already getting the attention, but then just rejecting it.

[TheLadysGhost]

Try removing commitment issues. After that, you will just have to experiment.

[Omicr0n]

54 minutes ago, TheLadysGhost said:

Try removing commitment issues. After that, you will just have to experiment.

I did that when I initially tried the Flirty trait. I swapped out Commitment Issues for Flirty, but nothing changed. At this point, unless anybody has any further input or suggestions, the only other next step I can think of is starting a new game and pulling mods out. I'm not gonna have time for that currently, so I'll have to put a pin in this issue for now. If Sims 3 didn't take 3+ minutes to get from desktop to a loaded save every time, I could get more testing done.

[FreakyRufus]

Do you have any mods at all installed related to romance or relationships, other than KW? Do you have Nraas WooHooer? Anything like RRR or the Retuned Attraction System?

 

When he is rejecting flirts, what is his starting relationship with the sim flirting? Are they friends, good friends, best friends, just acquaintances? Does he reject flirts from his best friend?

[Omicr0n]

2 hours ago, FreakyRufus said:

Do you have any mods at all installed related to romance or relationships, other than KW? Do you have Nraas WooHooer? Anything like RRR or the Retuned Attraction System?

I have all 3 of those mods. I also tried removing all of them, but there was no change in behavior. I haven't found the time yet to test starting a new game without them in the event that removing them in the middle of an active game isn't enough to disable their changes completely.

 

2 hours ago, FreakyRufus said:

When he is rejecting flirts, what is his starting relationship with the sim flirting? Are they friends, good friends, best friends, just acquaintances? Does he reject flirts from his best friend?

Best friends with all traits known.

[FreakyRufus]

8 minutes ago, Omicr0n said:

I have all 3 of those mods. I also tried removing all of them, but there was no change in behavior. I haven't found the time yet to test starting a new game without them in the event that removing them in the middle of an active game isn't enough to disable their changes completely.

 

Best friends with all traits known.

That is very strange. I have found with all of those installed that my sims can seduce a married sim that is family oriented once they reach best friends status. In a game I was playing just a few minutes ago, my controlled sim used "kiss in the heat of the moment" on a sim that she was good friends with, with commitment issues, and married, and it was accepted. One thing I have noticed, and I'm not sure which mod might be responsible for it, but sims seem to be more likely to accept a romantic action later on if they have previously accepted one in the past. For example, because KW woohoo isn't always treated as romance, if you can get the two sims aroused enough, they might woohoo when they would reject romance. Later, they might be more likely to accept a flirt.

 

Another thing that I have noticed, which isn't really related to KW at all, is that sometimes, if your sim uses a bunch of Funny interactions, until the conversation level is hilarious, and then you tell a flirty joke, it can switch the mood to flirty, and the sim might be more likely to accept a flirt.

 

Another thing I have done, is if your sims have a very high friendship level and you get the conversation up to Friendly, a sim might accept a romantic hug when they would reject a flirt, and again, that will switch the mood to flirt, and you can start flirting and complimenting them.

 

I have not tried to see what happens when one of my sims is the one being flirted with though, I'm usually pretty aggressive with having my sims being the initiator.

 

It might depend on your settings in WooHooer. I usually have most of those on defaults. I change it to polyamory jealousy, and may or may not change the Jealousy level, but those shouldn't effect whether a sim will accept or reject romance, just how their partner will react.

[Omicr0n]

13 hours ago, FreakyRufus said:

That is very strange. I have found with all of those installed that my sims can seduce a married sim that is family oriented once they reach best friends status. In a game I was playing just a few minutes ago, my controlled sim used "kiss in the heat of the moment" on a sim that she was good friends with, with commitment issues, and married, and it was accepted. One thing I have noticed, and I'm not sure which mod might be responsible for it, but sims seem to be more likely to accept a romantic action later on if they have previously accepted one in the past. For example, because KW woohoo isn't always treated as romance, if you can get the two sims aroused enough, they might woohoo when they would reject romance. Later, they might be more likely to accept a flirt.

 

Another thing that I have noticed, which isn't really related to KW at all, is that sometimes, if your sim uses a bunch of Funny interactions, until the conversation level is hilarious, and then you tell a flirty joke, it can switch the mood to flirty, and the sim might be more likely to accept a flirt.

 

Another thing I have done, is if your sims have a very high friendship level and you get the conversation up to Friendly, a sim might accept a romantic hug when they would reject a flirt, and again, that will switch the mood to flirt, and you can start flirting and complimenting them.

 

I have not tried to see what happens when one of my sims is the one being flirted with though, I'm usually pretty aggressive with having my sims being the initiator.

 

It might depend on your settings in WooHooer. I usually have most of those on defaults. I change it to polyamory jealousy, and may or may not change the Jealousy level, but those shouldn't effect whether a sim will accept or reject romance, just how their partner will react.

Yeah my sim has absolutely no problem as the flirting initiator. The problem is when other sims out of my control are the initiators, which wasn't an issue pre-girlfriend. The NPCs I was testing with are also ones that my sim has flirted with and had sex with in the past, so there's already history between them. It's been a while since I've loaded Sims 3 up to test anything, but one thing I seem to recall is that if my sim was already flirty then the other sim could flirt with him as normal. The problem there is that my sim would always have to be the initiator in order to get into the flirty mood, which is what I'm trying to avoid. I still haven't seen anybody weigh in on whether that's the normal expected behavior in the game, but it's one of the things I plan on testing at some point.

 

I played around with the WooHooer settings but nothing had the desired effect. Unrelated to this issue, but I did also notice some minor incompatibilities between WooHooer and KW. One thing that comes to mind is that the "Ask if single" interaction disappears entirely, presumably because both mods contain code related to whether the interaction is in Friendly or Romantic.

Edited October 16, 2022 by Omicr0n

[Omicr0n]

As a followup to this 8 months later, I decided to get back into Sims 3 and I remembered this issue that I was having, so I did some further testing.

 

I ended up removing KW, Retuned Attraction System, Romantic Reputation Recombobulator, and Woohooer from my mods, which were the only mods I could think of that might affect the behavior of the flirting/relationships. I then cleared the cache files, started a new game with a new character, used MC to give myself a girlfriend, and then got flirty sims to try and flirt with my character. The result was the exact same. My character would reject the flirting while he had a girlfriend, but then accept it as soon as the girlfriend was removed. I tried this with different traits as well such as Commitment Issues, Flirty, Hopeless Romantic, Irresistible, etc. That seems to just be how the game behaves by default and is unaffected by your traits. As a note, if your character initiates the flirting first then back and forth flirting works just fine.

 

So I guess if you want to play a character that's always receptive to flirting from everyone, then don't take any relationships higher than Romantic Interest, otherwise the character will only accept flirting from Romantic Interest and above. The only further testing I could think of doing would be to remove all mods except MC on the off chance that something else is causing this behavior, but that seems unlikely.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Omicr0n