Well folks, a new patch means new content and new problems.
So I was wondering what people thought of the new attraction system that EA have introduced?

I'll be honest at first I found it quite cute that townies were randomly giving each other flowers but now it's irritating me. Not the flower giving, that's still cute, but the constant gifts and phone calls.
Yesterday I had a townie call my Sim in the middle of her wedding to ask her on a date. Needless to say she turned him down.

So what do people think? Got any stories of your own?

I had to go get an old No Autonomous Cell Phone mod because my sim's phone NEVER stopped ringing. She couldn't do anything for all the calls for a date.

The only thing that it's done to my game was a sim asked my teen to go on a date, it was a prompt like a phone call. I said sure and they auto romanced a little, he gave her flowers and got to know each other. He already had a girlfriend, so the date ended pretty fast on it's own. I guess my sim wasn't interested in him after all. Also my adult married sim went to the grocery and I got a little message saying someone wanted to get to know her better, I ignored it. That was it though, no stalking phone calls and no crazy people bugging the house hold. I wish it was more aligned with sims 2, so it made more sense and you could base the relationships on bolts still, I really liked that.

God, I know how you feel, my game feels like I'm running some kind prostitution mod or something.

It's annoying me... Waiting for a mod to turn it off or something, ugh. I keep getting notifications from Sims that are not even in my vicinity! "I appreciate your blablabla lets get to know each other".... No. Just, enough already! My married couple with 5 kids and 5 grandkids are not even attracted to each other, what kind of BS is that?

I haven't gotten any phone calls yet. It usually happens to my sims on community lots - a message will appear with the other sim's face about having stuff in common or whatever. When my sim had a house fire, the firefighter hit on him and there were speech balloons coming out of their mouths. But often the whole thing seems to happen telepathically - they don't walk up to each other and declare their attraction.
The weirdest one was my sim was asleep in the early morning hours and a message appeared from her co-worker, Boyd Wainwright, about how he found her ambition or work ethic - or something - attractive. Like he was invading her dreams.
I don't like the attraction system and will ignore it - if it becomes possible to turn it off, I'll do that.

EAs dirty little secrets revealed. You'll note in all the hype about Seasons, no one seemed to want to talk about the attraction system.

Well, they can't all be winners I guess.

Maybe they added the attraction system as a contrast, to make all the other features look that much better ?

Pfft, another new feature everyone wants to shut off? Oh EA...

The attraction system...
The celebrity system...
The vampire system...

Further research needed (read: consult dictionary). Not much systemic in the systems.

There are always people that like and dislike features. I personally like the new attraction system. Granted, I've only encountered two sims that attracted to mine, and only one call asking my sim on a date so far (Plus I am playing a single sim... ). This was all in probably a week of sim time.

... What Sims got a memory every time the attraction system was used?

Attraction system can be turned off with this:
http://simsasylum.com/tfm/index.php...ction-disabler/

People are still keeping the memory system enabled?

They could at least let us choose to what Sims attractions are, like in Sims 2... now it's just random... or based on what?

Ohhhh. Is it the new attraction feature that does this? I wondered.

In my legacy family, my character (Amaranth) has a boyfriend. Long-term boyfriend, they've been wanting to get married for a long time. Suddenly Amaranth gets a call. Her boyfriend's older brother asks her out on a date.

Head, meet desk.

The only thing I've found somewhat annoying about it is that my family (both of whom have "Eternally Faithful" moodlets) keeps getting the message from the housekeeper. Amarylis isn't the least bit enamoured of Grady. Fortunately it isn't every day he comes to the house, but the first time he comes to the house each time I load the game. And, of course, the calls for dates.

I think it might only be random on pre-made sims. I'll see if there's anything about attraction in CAS when I make a new sim tonight.

EDIT: I've looked in CAS and there's no way for the player to control who's attracted to them, and who they are attracted to; so it is random as far as I can tell. That makes me sad...

A few days ago I made a couple new Sims, none of which had any traits in common. I had two of them do a little flirting and suddenly they were attracted to each other. Again, they have absolutely no traits in common.

Well, that at least, is like real life. People can be attracted to one another without having any traits in common.

So the attractive system is....."broken" as usual.

I wonder, if TS3 developer team ever play the game they built? They add new feature, but they didn't balance it out very well. The problem is already noticeable after several hours of playing. It's funny that they didn't notice it and fix it for months of development, there's no beta tester in EA to give a report?

I don't mind to became a beta tester for TS3 and TS4.....

True, but it's not very likely. People tend to gravitate more towards those who are similar to them. Besides, I was under the impression the attraction system used traits to determine whether or not one Sim is attracted to another. Or am I misinformed?

Thank you SO MUCH for this - it was driving me nuts having all of my sims randomly and inappropriately being attracted to each other, CONSTANTLY...


It was noticeable, and really, really annoying, in my game after about three minutes, never mind several hours. Maybe I've just been unlucky, but whether going into one of my save games or starting a fresh new game, everyone was instantly all over each other, and I was getting p'd off with sims I didn't really want to get romantic with each other, such as my Unsavoury Charlatan, Mr Skeleto and Servo immediately forming a love triangle with each other, which was not a pretty sight.

Do EA developers ever playtest anything? The impression I've been getting with TS3 is that they come up with what they think is a clever idea and just bang it into the game with no testing. I used to be a software developer and had to spend hours desk-checking my work before unleashing it live, and I just can't understand how EA can keep missing obvious problems.

Oh well, since I don't have the patch yet, I didn't even realize what was coming - sounds rather terrible! Are these attractions related to the Sims' likes and dislikes, or are they truly just random? Awwwg, I guess in that case I'll need a switch-off mod, too ...

I really don't think there is any testing period, even within the team making the EP. Questions to SimGuruGraham on the attraction system were never answered. Shortly after the patch's release:

@SimGuruGraham what's the whole deal with the attraction thing? I'm really confused but it sounds really cool!
@ErinPandagirl That's actually one of the features I know the least about. Looking forward to messing around with it a bit myself.