The Sims 4's next expansion will make Sims actually care about each other's personalities
The Sims 4's next expansion, Growing Together, and the incoming free update for the base game are adding a lot of new outfits and furniture and a proper infant life stage, but the really exciting thing is the expansion's deeper simulation of relationships, which looks like it's entering straight-up strategy game territory. It's enough to make a Build Mode purist like me a little jealous.
In a presentation of the expansion's features, Maxis showed off lots of Create-A-Sim features with Live Mode implications. Most interesting among them are the new social likes and dislikes and the family dynamics system. In the same way you can choose preferences for music styles or activities for your Sims, you'll also be able to determine what kinds of traits and interactions they enjoy from other Sims. They might like funny Sims and prank interactions but dislike homebody Sims and physical intimacy, for example.
Over in the household relationships portion of Create-A-Sim, you'll have a new dropdown menu for «family dynamics» with options like «supportive,» «difficult,» or «jokesters» to define relationships between each member of the household. Likes, dislikes, and dynamics can all be set ahead of time in CAS, but can also emerge through gameplay for you to approve in the way that Sims will sometimes ask if they should decide they like painting, for instance.
That all feeds into the new compatibility rating that you can find in the relationships panel in Live Mode. For each two Sims, their total likes, dislikes, traits, and existing dynamics are assessed to generate a compatibility rating ranging from «amazing compatibility» down to «bad compatibility» to let you know how they're likely to get on.
Oh, and all of these new likes,
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