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transmogrified
retired moderator
Original Poster
#1 Old 26th Apr 2011 at 10:42 PM
Default Friendship
I've been working on strengthening the friendship relationships in my neighborhood, and I'm wondering what you do to make meaningful non-romantic relationships among your Sims.

• Do you make an effort to build friendships between specific Sims based on a predetermined story?
• Do you build friendships between Sims that meet certain criteria (i.e., live in the same apartment complex or follow the same career path or are good witches or attended Uni together)?
• Do you look for cues from the game to push friends on your Sims, like rolling the want to befriend someone or bringing a Sim home from school or work?
• Do you use Nightlife's social group options to send your Sims on outings with friends? Are they "just for fun," or do you like the challenge of a scored outing?
• What activities do your Sims do with their friends? Parties? Vacations? Does SimA ever invite a friend over just to hang out, or do you consider that a waste of time better spent skilling and wooing?
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 27th Apr 2011 at 12:03 AM
It's important to me to connect my core families and to have large circles of friends, and to keep families friendly with each other in the absence of story motivation to keep them apart. So I do a lot of friendship things. Circles of friends may be based on common history (hey, you were a Tri-Var? I pledged the semester after you left!), age cohort (we were kids together), mutual friends (wait, you know Harris Hawkins?), or mutual interests/activities/ambitions (we're all stay-at-home parents/wannabe business tycoons/musicians).

I use social groups not only for community outings but to get people together on residential lots. Why shouldn't you have all your old college buddies over for dinner at the same time? Who doesn't do that? Also, I've found that the kinds of labor-intensive, stressful situations to which I instinctively react by isolating my sim are better handled by letting them have groups of friends over to share the burden. Pregnancy with a toddler is easier if your friends come over and help you out once in awhile. You can even go to sleep with them there and they'll hang around doing the cleaning and repairing you influenced them to do, interacting with each other and your other family members, until you wake up. (Yes, I have friends like this, and thank god for them!)

I have a few stable social groups - my core sims, the ones I sent to college together their first day out of CAS, periodically get together, just the six of them, with no significant others or children - and a few fluctuating ones. The Crowd is a mixed group of teens and children which changes composition as its members age. Whenever one of them goes to college, one of his friends or relatives removes him from the roster and adds a different, younger friend or relative. I try to keep this group at a full 8 members and have at least two members arrange outings every rotation, preferably different members every time, so Sims B and C, who don't know each other well enough to show up when the outing is called by the other, will both come when their friend Sim A arranges the outing, and get to know each other better. I'm now getting enough teens to have a specialized Teen group (no children allowed) splintering off from this, and in the next few age cohorts I hope to have enough to justify separate public/private school social groups. If I go on long enough I can even run cliques.

These outings are all "just for fun;" I haven't figured out how to get a good outing score and am not interested in getting one, but a "just for fun" outing will please most of the people most of the time and serve my purposes without the stress and time limits of a running meter.

Another thing I do, to make family friends, is "invite household." If your kid isn't bringing the next-door neighbor's kids home after school, but you've made friends with their mom, call Mom up, invite everybody over, and even if the kids go home early you've got your foot in the door and your kids can call them and add them to a social group. When teens go to college, parents and siblings who want to see them invite their entire household and meet or get to know better the people their kid is living with. it's a great way to keep families in touch.

I am less likely to do parties except for special occasions or when a sim puts up a want for it. I try to have at least one Greek party per University rotation to cross-pollinate the students, but the mere fact of the time limit makes them less suited to the kind of intense socialization I prefer my sims to have in large groups.

I tend to ride these big get-togethers with a loose rein. If one of my active sims needs a skill point that can be gotten via a social activity, such as playing chess or bowling, I'll make sure that one invites someone I want to improve his relationship with to join him, and I try to ensure that certain people at least talk to each other. That's often to do with my romantic machinations, though, and therefore outside the purview of the question.

Sims who have computers check e-mail and send one e-mail every day, generally to the lowest-ranked friend in their directory, but I don't let them chat unless they really need those points, someone appears online who I've been anxious to connect with them, or I need to let them do something in the background while I deal with other household members. Phone conversations ditto. They aren't interesting for me so the sims don't do them! I always let them answer the phone if there's time, though, and accept invitations from playables as long as the sim has at least a 50% energy bar.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Field Researcher
#3 Old 27th Apr 2011 at 12:46 AM
I don't focus on friendship too much on my game. I mean, I like for my sims to have at least a few friends (since that's realistic and also makes throwing parties easier, especially if the sim doesn't have a large family), but I focus more on romances, baby-making (having my sims make babies, naturally. I realize it sounds kind of bad the way I worded it!), and child-raising. When I DO actively have my sims make friends, I make sure to focus on as many good social interactions as possible. I've learned to be careful about kissing, though. I've learned that hard way that anything other than "family kiss" will quickly make sim relationships turn romantic (which frustrates me a bit. I mean, it's not all that unusual for friends to give each other a little friendly peck, especially female friends. Kissing your friend does NOT mean you are in love with him/her!).

And now that I have the ACR installed, I'll really have to watch out to make sure that none of my sims accidentally fall in love with their friends (that I don't want them to fall in love with, I mean)!

As for bringing a friend home from school/work....It's a good concept, but my sims tend to do it at the most innaproprite times! For example, if I want to have a sim go on a date or spend some quality time with his/her spouse right after work, it's a pretty safe bet they'll decide to bring a friend a home. And my sim kids have been known to bring a friend home while their parents are in the middle of having a little "playtime" of their own (which, granted, the kid couldn't possibly have known, but still!). Luckily, none of the kid guests has ever gone anywhere near where the parents are (can you imagine if they did?! "Mom, dad, guess what I saw Mr. and Mrs. Jones do today!" The poor parents would probably have to have the "woohoo talk" with their kid a little earlier than planned! )!
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#4 Old 27th Apr 2011 at 1:35 AM
FemGamerPlayer - if you have the second version of ACR, you can mark friendships to remain platonic with any sim you choose. Useful feature.
Scholar
#5 Old 27th Apr 2011 at 1:49 AM
Friendships are important in my game especially amongst family groups. I've got several large core families and I try to ensure that cousins as well as grandparents make friends at with their relations. Amongst the cousins I tend to focus the friendships among similar age groups, which only makes sense. This is usually easy as they tend to bring each other home from school or I also use group outings to have a large family get together. The grandparents are usually a bit harder since I don't have any that actually live with any of their children, at the moment at least.

I tend to focus that from the grandparents side since they have a heck of a lot more free time than the families themselves. They usually call and invite over the household and have a BBQ or dinner, very informal, I don't use parties for this purpose as I don't like the time limitation nor the running about trying to meet the specific party needs to get a good score.

I do use the phone to maintain friendships especially those with townies or dormies. I use the phone feature with the Pescado's macrotastics system for this as it's so easy to do. Just make the call and select "friends" and your Sim will call everyone in their friend list and talk to them until they hit 100 on the short term scale. They only call the Sims that are home though so depending on the time of day you could still need to make some individual calls. I don't use this for their real friends and family though since they see them fairly often.

Making friends with townies or dormies is sort of something that just happens for my Sims, I don't go out of my way to accomplish it unless I have plans to incorporate that Sim into the playables via a romance or marriage. In fact I try to avoid them making friends with townie coworkers and so forth but sometimes it's impossible since some of them turn into stalkers. Unless of course it's a romance Sim then they tend to pick their lovers from amongst the townies and they end up knowing just about everybody in town.

One of the reasons I avoid them making friends with dormies unless they have high chemistry and a romance is possible is that the dormie isn't going anywhere. So when the playable eventually has kids and they go off to Uni it's weird to me that they may end up dating a friend of their parents or someone one of their parents once dated as well. Not that the dormie's retain any of this information every new term is like a clean slate for them.

I use the social group functions for family, extended family, college buddies, childhood friends and so forth. I tend to keep them to groups of 4 unless it's a family get together. I have social groups for Mah Jong, poker, pool and darts so 4 is the ideal number for any of those games. I mean who doesn't have their pals over to play a few games once in awhile or go out and shoot some pool together? I always use the just for fun option as I don't see the point of the timed outing.

Most of the parties my Sims throw are in Uni and then they throw quite a few of them. I do have B day parties for kids going to teens, mostly so they can meet extended family members and the occasional house party to liven things up a bit. Primarily though I use community lots and restrict via age in order for same age groups to socialize. I've been doing this a great deal for teens lately, probably because I have so many of them in my game at the moment. This way the Sim your playing can be on a date while all the other teens are hanging out and getting to know each other, or flirting with someone they shouldn't and causing havoc to breakout in the back ground.

Always much harder to keep up with all the friends and family if you have Sims in major birthing mode however. I usually play it from the other side of the relationship then which is another reason it's hard to stay friends with townies its all one-sided.

I don't use the computer for anything but novel writing, ordering groceries, applying and checking scholarships and planning vacations. There's simply not enough of a relationship boost in chatting and emailing.

While I don't mind kids bringing home a friend from school, usually, I can't stand them bringing friends home from work. Probably because I use a hack from Simbology where they ask if they can bring a friend home from school, you can always say no if it's not appropriate. When they bring them home from work usually my Sim is out showing off by the mail box while the freeloading coworker heads off to play with their stuff then they have to track them down in order to get them off the lot. I had an incident last night where the guy brings home his coworker and then proceeds directly in the house to woohoo with his wife. It was hours later and the yahoo is still standing outside fishing in their pond (I had forgotten about him) when I finally sent out the guy to say goodbye.
Scholar
#6 Old 27th Apr 2011 at 3:58 AM
I don't normally do a whole lot of friendship, except as children or teenagers bring home friends from school. It's something I should probably get in the habit of doing. (I had to download TwoJeffs' No Friends Needed for Careers hack long ago just to get my Sims promoted! )
Instructor
#7 Old 27th Apr 2011 at 4:13 AM
Friendships in the sims can be tricky, and I usually don't try to force them. I do take my sims to community lots where they can meet others, and will nudge them towards sims with similsar aspirations and interests because, as in real life, people tend to like people who are like themselves. Fortune sims are a little different than most, as they would probably befriend someone who has connections that can advance their careers-at least, that's how I interpret them. They may also have a core of very close friends who have nothing to do with their field of interest, just for the variety they provide or because they have known them since childhood. Romance sims are also a special case, and probably befriend as many people as they can to keep a stable of potential "conquests" to achieve a lifetime want.

As far as building relationships, the "hang out" interaction is very good-it doesn't rack up the points as quickly as the hot tub, but it is free and has the advantage of engaging all the sims on the lot if you so choose, whereas the hot tub only accomodates four at a time. So, I do not consider it a waste of time, and sometimes use it to occupy sims who have a tendency to get into mischief while I deal with their more rational family members.

Finally, those clowns that your sims insist on bringing home from work or school are usually (in my experience, at least) diametrically opposed to the sim who brought them home and are almost impossible to deal with on any civil level. It is best to send them packing as soon as they step out of the car or off the bus, as it will take far longer to build a friendship with them than another sims who has similar wants and goals. In effect, they are the true time wasters, as they usually head straight for your sims' shiny things and will ignore all attempts at conversation or other reaction until they get hungry, tired or have stayed past their self imposed curfew. Get them off the lot ASAP, as they will only frustrate you, and call up that sim you met at the mall. The few points you gain from a phone conversation may seem trivial at first, but they do add up, and far outweigh the aggravation of trying to get the attention of a sim who has gone tharn on your computer.

From Simonut: Here is my take on if Sims 2 is losing popularity or not, If you offer or give a monkey a banana will he take it even if the banana is green or yellow ? Whatever new games EA put out there like the Sims3 some human somewhere will buy it.
Meet Me In My Next Life
#8 Old 27th Apr 2011 at 4:24 AM Last edited by Simonut : 28th Apr 2011 at 12:20 AM.
NightLife ( love that expansion ) really place the Sims in a higher level for friendship Sims can invite Sims out on the town or to their home with the new group system. (Managed Groups/ Casual Groups )
With my Sims they all have their own little groups they hang out with and build friendship with even their kids play together.

In my game I have a class system with who my Sims hang out with , I have my Rich Sims, Middle Class Sims and Sims that are somewhat on the poor side of the track , they all have their core of friends.
My Rich Sims friends are just like them rich, I know it sound snobbish, ( but in the real word how many rich people hang out with the poor ? ) it may happen but it is rare if they do.

With my different class system of Sims they each have a "Groups Leader" who Managed the group, then I have my Casual Groups mostly my teens Sims in my game have that.
What I do like is that there are two kinds of group gatherings Unscored gatherings is called just for fun and scored gatherings is called outings.

One time I had a teen on an outing with other teens he started acting toward others in the group in an unfriendly manner. So I had the Sims who ask for the outing to tell him to leave.
Also what I like when your Sims Managed a group him or her can always kick a member to the curb. All in all my Sims in my game no matter if they are rich, middle class or poor they all have their friends.

"Nothing in life is a Surprise it just happen to come your way at the time".
Mad Poster
#10 Old 27th Apr 2011 at 1:43 PM
Well, if you have FreeTime, your Popularity Sims have an aspiration benefit of make friends faster. Three-way calling is pretty handy too.
Mad Poster
#11 Old 27th Apr 2011 at 2:15 PM
When sims bring townies home from work, I try to Entertain them as soon as they get out of the car, and look to see if the Network option appears right afterward. If it does, I let the Network happen, because though most of them are lame and one of them is offensive, some of them are pretty good, and then I say Good-bye and get on with the night. If the Network interaction doesn't appear in my sim's queue, I don't even let him talk, just say good-bye. Once in awhile they get away from me, usually if I'm busy in the house and don't notice right away that my working sim's come home.

If the Network turns out to be offering a married sim a blind date, I'm rude to him before I say good-bye!

When they bring home playables from work, I always keep them to dinner, as I want to have people who work together hang out together.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Inventor
#12 Old 27th Apr 2011 at 3:51 PM
I have ACR in my game so if someone brings a colleague home from work (who I usually can't be bothered with to be honest), I don't even bother inviting them in and make them do "Macro/Friendly" interactions until the relationship score has gone up to about 80, then say goodbye. hehe.

I really can't be bothered with inviting them in or feeding them. But then I'm a miserable old sod who lives like Howard Hughes!
Scholar
#13 Old 27th Apr 2011 at 4:24 PM
Friendship is one of those things I haven't really exploited in my sims game play so much yet. I do plan to really do that in this new neighborhood. I've got two mothers with children close in age and one of the children is really going to be in need of a good friend in his storyline.

To try and build stronger friendships I've been doing a bit of what Peni has been doing, using the casual outing feature to create friend groups with my playables. I'll definitely be stealing more of these ideas as time passes. I've also been using Inge's meeting controller to invite playables over and create more meaningful interactions like Peni's example where the pregnant mother with a toddler invites a friend or whoever over and they give her a rest and cook and clean. Besides it being realistic its creates a friendship that has more meaningful interactions than sitting around playing chess and chatting all day.

As for the sims my sims bring home from work. I usually try 3 interactions with them as soon as they step out of the car. If they go well they can be friends if not its "good-bye".

Hey Jo welcome back.
#14 Old 27th Apr 2011 at 5:08 PM
I don't think my sims know exactly what a platonic friend even is. They certainly understand what a friend with benefits is though. Usually just friendships that aren't sexual in nature are reserved for elders who have the time to go to a community lot with friends and sip a couple cups of coffee and gossip. It used to be that I would do that in University too to take up some of the time after the requirements were met and I was just waiting for finals day but after getting the college adjuster and just sending them to finals right after they skill the requirements i go through Uni pretty fast these days.

The only way it seems that sims in my game get to best friend status non sexually is if they're family related. And like most others have said the children the kids bring home are just obnoxious and annoying. It's like why would u bring them home when your social bar is full? If it's fun you need watch the TV then do your homework i don't need some lil brat who can't stay till past 6 hogging the sofa and food. Save it for a weekend outing. If a sim brings home a friend from work when they're at the top of their career I'll simply pretend it's their boss and then contemplate whether or not they should have an affair. Scratch that, if their family sims I'll contemplate. If they're romance with secondary fortune they definitely have an affair.
Instructor
#15 Old 27th Apr 2011 at 10:24 PM
I use the group feature a lot and I find this hack to be invaluable:

http://www.insimenator.org/index.php?topic=42942

Since there are no townies in my hood, I don't have to worry about Sims bringing home other Sims that are not important to the hood. Everyone plays a role. It is very interesting for me to see who interacts with whom.

I use the groups feature for the poker club, the bowling league, the movie lover's cinema group, the gym rats club, the book and bakery club, the gamers guild, etc. etc. One Sim is the leader of the club and the others are invited in as they meet the group's qualifications (if there are any).

I also have a Secret Club group, invitation is based on your influence and wealth. An old boy's club as it were. Each member gets their own ring with insignia:

http://linna.modthesims.info/download.php?t=266260 (My priest also wears one as his insignia - imagine they would be good for royal families, too)

Of course wearing this big honking ring makes it not so secret anymore, but whatevs.

Groups are invaluable for building meaning into the friendships because of a shared activity.

Liv Loves Simming: http://livlukas.tumblr.com

Liv Loves LiveSimming: http://www.livestream.com/livlukas

Field Researcher
#16 Old 28th Apr 2011 at 1:33 AM
Quote: Originally posted by SingleClawDesigns
If it's fun you need watch the TV then do your homework
Speaking of homework, that's another reason I don't like it when kids bring friends home from school. I like to have my sim kids do their homework right after they get home from school (I use Maxmotives first if any of their motives are real low, to insure they'll do the homework without complaining), since otherwise I tend to forget to have them do it (and then, of course, their grades drop, and if they drop too far, the social worker comes!).

So the poor "friends" my sim kids bring home from school usually first get ignored while I make my sim kids do their homework.....and then sent home (yes, I know I could just send them home right away, but I prefer to stick to my routinue of making sim kids do their homework the minute they come home. Plus, it makes things funnier!)! Incidentally, while my sim kids' "friends" are being ignored, they usually make a beeline for the toy box (all of my sim kids have one), take out toys, play with them.....and then "forget" to put them away when they're done (during which time my playable sim kid is probably thinking, "It's not fair that my friend gets to play with my toys while I have to do homework!")! Anyway, pn the rare occasion that a sim kid brings home another of my playable sim kids, I'll let them hang around for a bit (unless I've lost interest in playing the family the kid who was brought home is in), and if they get a high friendship score early on, I let them be friends.

In fact, Beau Broke brought home one of Lucy Burb's younger sisters, Maryanna, and they became friends really fast (in fact, I was amazed when, not that long after they had met, I checked Beau's relationship panels and discovered he had a whopping 80 relationship points with Maryanna! A lot of that was probably due to the fact that I had them hang out....which makes the relationship meter fill up really fast). They are now both YAs about to attend college (I've moved them to the student bin, but haven't yet selected a college for them. It will probably be Sim State, as I haven't played that one in awhile), and I plan to have them become a couple.

On a similar note, I actually kind of like when teenager sims bring home opposite-gender friends. Because when that happens, I get to try to set them up.
Instructor
#17 Old 28th Apr 2011 at 2:11 AM
Quote: Originally posted by jodemilo
I have ACR in my game so if someone brings a colleague home from work (who I usually can't be bothered with to be honest), I don't even bother inviting them in and make them do "Macro/Friendly" interactions until the relationship score has gone up to about 80, then say goodbye. hehe.

I really can't be bothered with inviting them in or feeding them. But then I'm a miserable old sod who lives like Howard Hughes!



Where have you been hiding?


Your playstyle sounds a lot like mine was when I first started...it seems they always choose the most annoying, contrary people to bring home, so I usually wait till they bring one of my other playables home to do any serious socializing. That way I can work the relationship from both ends to maintain it.

From Simonut: Here is my take on if Sims 2 is losing popularity or not, If you offer or give a monkey a banana will he take it even if the banana is green or yellow ? Whatever new games EA put out there like the Sims3 some human somewhere will buy it.
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