Emotion Score Guide

[ArthurHeng]

Hi guys, I've been trying to figure out how emotion affect our sims since I've started playing. And this is a small test that I've done and my findings are as follows:

Happy is a positive emotion that amplifies the other positive emotions such as Inspired, Focused, Confident and Energized, making them more powerful. When you are not feeling any other emotions, ie not in the radius of other emotion aura items or not affected by other moodlets, you are simply Happy. A Happy score of 1 to 7 makes you simply "Happy". Here my sim has the following moodlets:
-Feeling Great Happy+2
-Nicely Decorated Happy+2
-Fancy Soap Happy+1
-Morning Sim Happy+1
-Pretty Tasty Happy+1

Happy+7 making her "Happy":


I placed a bunch of paintings in the room making the room Beautifully Decorated (Happy+3), Happy score becomes 8 and she is now "Very Happy".


Now I take away the decorations, making the room less decorated (Happy+3 => Happy+1), then places a Focus+1 aura trophy near her. Happy scores will boost other primary emotions, so Focus+1 boosted by Happy+6 = Focus+7, she is now "Focused".


Bump up the decorations of the room, Focus+1 and Happy+7 = Focus+8, she is now "Very Focused".


Lastly, Happy will boost the primary emotions with the highest score, so if you are feeling Focus+3, Confident+2, Inspired+1, Playful+1, Flirty+1, tense+1, embarassed+1, Happy+5, your active emotion will be "Very Focused" (Focus+3 and Happy+5 = Focus+8). In the case of primary emotion scores tied, the game seems to be on a first come first serve basis. Only an emotion with a higher score than your current one will change your mood.


Anyway, hope this helps. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

[_Annika_]

That is very nicely explained - there is just one small thing though - when there are no other emotions, a sim is just 'fine'. That is, when there are no happy emotions either.

[ArthurHeng]

Ah yes, there is also Fine, which is a neutral state of emotion I think. Thanks for pointing that out!

[EtnaFan666]

So let me get this straight - if you have no emotional influence, you are just Fine, the normal emotion which isn't bad or good. But if good things like environment or moodlets influence you, you can be Happy or Sad, and these boost positive or negative emotions respectively. Also, there are three positive emotions that can improve skilling(Focused boosts skilling in Logic, Inspired boosts Creativity, and Energized boosts Athletics) while the negative emotions are just bad juju(Embarassed, Bored and Depressed).

I think I can get the gist of emotions now. I was a little worried I would hate them but you explain it very easily - I can now buy The Sims 4 without getting worried that I would miss a lot of stuff! Thanks! 

[ArthurHeng]

Yes, there are a few more, Flirty, Playful, Confident, off the top of my head.

For negative emotions, if you have Angry+1 and Happy+1, you will still be Happy. If Angry+2 and Happy+1, then you are Angry since Angry score is more than Happy.

I feel the emotion system could have been better with a bit more tweaking, but since the game is still constantly being improved by updates, I am Confident that the game will play much smoother in the future.

[Carl]

I had come to the same conclusion that it was +8 before I read this thread, but thank you so much for your efforts. I was going to ask for confirmation from others if they came to 'Very' emotions at +8, but now don't need to. I didn't know about Very Happy as I had not used it, so this helps with the Emotions Guide. Thanks a lot!

Maybe I can help a bit. I discovered the thresholds for the Emotional Aura Decor

Simply having an aura in the room will give you a +1 buff to an Emotion. I believe +10 gets you +2 from Decor and +50 gets you +3 from Decor. I tested this with the lamps that come from registering Sims 3, but it's not exact as those are all 4's. It is 100% clear that at 12 you will get +2 and 52 will get you +3, so I assume they set it at 10 and 50.

[Ciosa]

Does anyone know the thresholds on the third emotional tier?  I think it's only for angry, embarrassed, and playful - but if I were looking to create some poor ghost lost in a perpetual sea of rage and anger, what kind of numbers would I have to hit to keep them enraged for four hours?

[DarkWalker]

Does anyone know the thresholds on the third emotional tier?  I think it's only for angry, embarrassed, and playful - but if I were looking to create some poor ghost lost in a perpetual sea of rage and anger, what kind of numbers would I have to hit to keep them enraged for four hours?

According to the tuning files:

Only one level: Fine, Bored, Asleep, Dazed

Two levels, threshold 3: Sad

Two levels, threshold 4: Uncomfortable, Stressed

Two levels, threshold 8: Happy, Flirty, Inspired, Confident, Focused, Energized

Three levels, thresholds 3 and 6: Embarassed

Three levels, thresholds 3 and 7: Angry

Three levels, thresholds 8 and 15: Playful

[Ciosa]

Thank you for all the awesome information!  One more question (famous last words...)  Does the penalty to social skills from Embarrassed progress, like in the other emotional states?  I.e, does Embarrassed give a -1, Humiliated give a -2, and Mortified give a -3?  Or is it constant at -1?

[DarkWalker]

Thank you for all the awesome information!  One more question (famous last words...)  Does the penalty to social skills from Embarrassed progress, like in the other emotional states?  I.e, does Embarrassed give a -1, Humiliated give a -2, and Mortified give a -3?  Or is it constant at -1?

Yep, it progresses. -1 to social skills at Embarrassed, -2 at Humiliated, -3 at Mortified. And you made me realize that I had left Embarrassed out of my table in the post I made about this 

Fixed 

[Ciosa]

Yep, it progresses. -1 to social skills at Embarrassed, -2 at Humiliated, -3 at Mortified. And you made me realize that I had left Embarrassed out of my table in the post I made about this 

Fixed 

Ironic embarrassment is the best kind!   

It seems like they need to rebalance Confident - it's the 'ideal' state for Charisma, but Very Happy and Very Happy both grant the same bonus.  It seems like the social skills are more interesting in their fluidity, as compared to the locked-in states of Creative/Mental skills.  Physical Skills (Physical Skill?  Add more soon, Maxis!) has a pair of potentially buffing emotions, but the Social skills are all over the map.  In that case - if Confident isn't supposed to be the paired emotion for Charisma, then I suppose they don't need to rebalance it.  I had been getting my flirty Serial Romantic over into a confident state to work on Charisma, but it's nice to know I don't have to.  She can just fill her entire house with champagne buckets.

[Carl]

So, for the Auras, something exponential is possibly going on and my above post is wrong. I got notified of that from someone in my thread about the emotions guide on the official Forum. It's not looking at flat scores, as a 9 is way more valuable than just 2-3 "4s"  at getting you to the threshold for +2/+3 Emotional Auras. It is possible a larger score is needed and that the 9s get you there faster by multiplying against themselves, but this is just a theory. I am assuming in thinking it's even adding them up somehow.

[lindsaysoderberg]

@Carl, I've been trying to figure this out myself for a while now, and I have a lot of unanswered questions. Maybe some of you can help.

First of all, what is the relationship between the "Emotional Decor: _#_" and the +1/2/3/etc. Emotional Aura that your sim actually feels?
-For example, what is the difference between the effect of a Playful painting that has Emotion Aura: 6 and one that has Emotional Aura: 9?

Secondly, when these items are placed in a room, how is it determined whether or not your sim is effected by the items aura?
-Does each item have a radius of influence?
-Do some/all paintings have to be specifically "viewed" in order for your sim to be affected?

Is there a point at which the items basically "max-out" and your sim is no longer effected by them?
-For example, I have a computer on a desk covered in those quills that are inspirational decor 8. The desk and computer both have some level of inspirational decor. On the wall above is the cork board with a complete set of postcards, each carrying about level 3 of inspirational decor. To one side is a bookshelf that gives off inspiring decor: 8, along with other inspiring decor, such as the easel, special painter's light, and the canvases leaning up against the wall. (Forgive me for any mistakes on the names of these items. I'm not reading them from the computer screen right now.) I even have the llama ice sculpture that is, I believe, happy decor: 8, siting there so that the happy will boost the inspired emotion.

That situation should be inspiring overkill, yet sometimes my sims aren't inspired right away or at all when they sit down to the computer. Clearly, there is more to it than just filling the room with those items. They could also still be working out the kinks over at Maxis, but I don't think this is a bug.

[JoxerTM22]

I was the one who told Carl it's not just adding emotion scores.
But my game is plagued by "crashing on save" bug caused by bloated savegames and I refuse to start a new one because it'll eventually get into the same state so couldn't proceed with testing.

I couldn't reconstruct the formula.
Also important is to test things in a square room. For whatever reason, if a room where emotional paintings are is not square, sims sometimes don't get emotion moodlets.

More on the matter:
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/12825451/#Comment_12825451
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/12843022/#Comment_12843022

Sorry people, until Maxis patches the game I can't help more.

[DarkWalker]

@JoxerTM22
If I understood the tuning files correctly — and if it's in any way similar to how Sims 3 was — the scores we see in the interface are just arbitrary labels, not guaranteed to directly relate to how strongly the object influences the environment. Each object has a different internal value for its effect on the environment, and that value is numerically far higher than the score we see. A mere Lump of Clay in an emotion-effecting shape has an internal score of 10, for example, which seems to be roughly equivalent to objects with an advertised score of 3.

I believe that this internal value for every object in the same room, and in line of sight (hence the issue with non-square rooms), is added together; from the tuning files (the ones starting with commodity_Environment_ , if you want to confirm the data), it needs 10 points to generate an 1-strength moodlet, 80 points to generate a 2-strength one, and 640 points to generate a 3-strength one.

For reference, if I'm reading the files correctly, a poor quality painting has a 5-points aura, a normal quality one has a 20-points aura, an outstanding quality one has a 60-points aura, and a masterworks one has a 120-points aura. Size doesn't seem to influence that.