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Emotional Overlap
Saw this concept for emotional overlaps based on the 5 basic emotions from the Disney movie, Inside Out, and thought it could inspire the devs with how to implement many different types of emotion into the game.
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Perhaps certain interactions and situations could increase or decrease points within the spectrum of basic emotions that could decide which emotional state your Para will enter? Based on personality type, of course. And over time these points decrease back to a neutral state, or certain remedial actions could cancel them out. Exercise could remove sadness points, for example.
Just a rough example – let’s say a Para loses their job which causes +10 Sadness and they fall into despair. But then some positive things happen for +10 happiness, and rather than becoming instantly happy (like TS4), they become melancholy, since happy + sad = melancholy.
I, personally, would have a lot of fun with this type of system. What if certain personality types are more susceptible to certain emotions? Or what if constant exposure to a certain emotion causes them to become more “numb” to other emotions? Too much exposure to fear and anger could turn your Para into a hateful person by default, for example.
Yes, I realise I am mainly focusing on the ‘negative’ emotions because, let’s be real, they’re more fun to play with.
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6 Replies
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I really like this idea! I think it would need a little bit of tweaking since this seems to be based off of one event (one event making you sad and happy at the same time making you feel melancholy), but if it was adjusted to work for multiple events it could be great! Did that make sense?
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I like the idea and I definitely agree that paras emotions should be effected by the actions and what happens in their simulated life. Emotions overlapping is a great concept. Also I think it shouldnt be so easy to change a paras mood.
It can also work other way around a para who has been betrayed by a lover for example can feel angry and sad shows both of the emotions.
I think the table looks pretty good but it feels like there should be more research done on it, like there are more emotions that can be defined.
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Totally an idea worth exploring!
Gets me more excited to know how the game will handle emotions.
How this the emotion overlap needs some more considerations tho.[quote quote=6841]I really like this idea! I think it would need a little bit of tweaking since this seems to be based off of one event (one event making you sad and happy at the same time making you feel melancholy), but if it was adjusted to work for multiple events it could be great! Did that make sense?
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As mentioned, it could come off as simply wrong if it just meshes and makes an emotion without considering the context. Something like context-based emotion could be quite complex…
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I think something like this could be amazing depending on what Alex’s design goals are for simulating emotions in Paralives. If his goal is to take what Sims 4 has with defined emotion states and make it less ‘gamey’ and more memorable, this would be a step in the right direction. Something like this would necessitate a smarter way to handle emotion modifiers, like having ‘moodlets’ drop in intensity over time depending on what they are, this would allow for the more meaningful life moments to actually have an impact on their emotions in the moment (high-intensity, low length), and also for the longer-lasting build up and become the more prevailing emotion (low-intensity, high length).
But back to be more on-subject: if Alex has defined emotion states like Sims 4 does, then the number of emotion state combinations would increase exponentially. If we were to use Sims 4’s emotions as an example (14 emotions valid for this example i.e. not including ‘Fine’, ‘Sleep’, or ‘POSSESSED’), that’s 196 emotion states. So I would be happier if we had this with less gamey emotions like Inspired or Confident.
