Social Menus Too Difficult to Navigate

[canelacaliente]

There needs to be a solution with the social menus.  As new packs are added on and more socials are added to the menu, the menu becomes harder to navigate.  Especially in times when I need to select a specific social.

[EA_Illium]

@canelacaliente Thank you for the feedback, is there a specific theme or layout you would like?

[JonaO703]

@canelacaliente OMG yes!  I was just thinking about this yesterday.  Sometimes I have to click "more choices" four to six times before I find the one I'm looking for.  There certainly needs to be better organization and also some game driven assistance.  Here are a coupld things I've been thinking about.

- I think part of the problem is with the initial wheel.  First, it would be great if the game recognized things like holidays and challenges, then bumped required interactions to the initial menu.  Then, when clicking more choices I would prefer to see all the main social menus at once.  For example, my spellcaster's magic social menu is always in the secondary menu.  It would be nice if all available menus were displayed at first click of the more choices there.

- Perhaps social menus could be further divided into submenus?  Friendly socials in particular are way too numerous.  Maybe there could be options like Friendly-Trait-based, Friendly-Moodlet-based, Friendly-Family-based (ie. parenthood) and so on?  No matter the layout, I think multiple clicks are inevitable but as you said, we need better navigation! 

Thank you for starting this!

[PugLove888]

@EA_Illium , I agree with @canelacaliente and @JonaO703 !  The menus are convoluted and tedious to navigate! The more packs we get the longer the whole process takes!   Sometimes a choice will not show up , but if you click away to reset it and try again the choice will be there again.  This is like gambling on whether the interaction you want to use will be there or not! 

And most of the problems that I have are in the "Friendly" category, as that is where most of the interactions are located.  Sometimes I"m looking for "Get to Know" and it is at the beginning of the Friendly section, but if I choose another interaction first , with the intent to Get to Know right after that, suddenly Get to Know is way in the back of the Friendly loop (or not even there at all!) 

I think this could be improved by making more sub-categories in the Friendly category.  So all the weather/season related interactions would be in their own sub-category, as would all the vampire related choices, university related choices, etc., and even the creative related socials and nerdy socials in their own respective categories. so that they are all easily located together and not mixed in with the generic Friendly socials like "Ask about Day, "Get to Know", and "Hug"! 

[Thats_Me_Madz]

@JonaO703 I'd also love to see the initial wheel push/bump socials which are relevant to currently running holidays/challenges/events so you aren't scrolling through masses to find "get to know" or "share holiday spirit" or whatever

[canelacaliente]

@EA_Illium If we break up the socials into several submenus, we will run into the same issue.

Here are the solutions I came up with:

1. Make the socials more situational. Don't show all the socials at once. Only show the ones that apply.
   1. If a Sim knows all the traits of another Sim, the "Get to Know" social will no longer appear. 
   2. Sims can no longer use certain socials after a relationship level is gained
   3. Have the socials that appear be based more on the Sim's emotional state and traits rather than just having all socials available.  Instead of graying out socials, just remove them from the menu.
2. Reduce the number of socials available. Many have no real effect on gameplay.
3. Change the social menu to a list with icons

I think the best solution would be to change the socials to a list with icons.  Here are some overlay ideas:

Here is an example of a list-style menu in another game:

[JonaO703]

@canelacaliente I like the idea of having a list instead of the wheel.  That would certainly be more friendly for navigation.  I also agree that certain socials should be bumped up to the initial menu / top of the list based on traits / emotional state.  I would add career and situation-based interactions to that prioritization.   I don't think I agree that the game should start removing socials altogether, though.  I think it runs the risk of eliminating needed social interactions for certain events and challenges, like dates for example.  Plus there are times I want my sim to make chit chat in order to just kill some time.  Things like "get to know" are good for that.

[Trismagistos]

@PugLove888 I made it practice to pause the game to search for the right interaction. 😅 And now with the new Stuff Pack Paranormal there will be even more types of interactions as I have seen in the Livestream about Paranormal. Especially when you want to play the Freelance option. I agree with you that there should be more sub categories or options in the friendly menu. And I also support your ideas about the categories. 

However, the problem I have with one of my Sims (the one I have been playing from the beginning) is that he has all the skills maxed out and almost all the traits. He also has had loads of jobs and reached almost every achievable goal. It would be a great idea to be able to select more sub categories but the problem will remain. To select an interesting social interaction in his case still will takes ages. 🥴

[PugLove888]

@Trismagistos , I forget that people don't pause the game to choose socials and to interact with objects!!! 🤣  I always pause the game!  I can't watch a relative of mine play because they never pause the game and it drives me bonkers! 🤪 But that is good that you mentioned it in case someone else reading this hasn't thought of that! 😎

But even with the game paused it still takes me a long time to sort through all the choices, and even more so when your choice doesn't come up at all and you have to click off so the choices reset in hopes that the one you are looking for will be there this time. 

And you bring up an excellent point about Sims who have maxed many or all of the skills!  

Of course, it will take a bit of time no matter how socials are formatted, like you said, but I think sub-menus (at least with in the Friendly socials) would help with a lot of this.  This is where I disagree with @canelacaliente .  Getting rid of socials is a problem... not everybody will agree in what to get rid of, and like @JonaO703 stated, some of the not necessary ones are great to pass time or to just provide variety if you are trying to fill your Sims social need!    Not only this, but for people who have their whims activated (which I always do) sometimes Sims get a whim to "Get to Know" somebody that they already know all the traits, so eliminating this choice completely should not happen!  I think if your Sims already knows all the traits of someone, then it should always be at the back of the choices, but if they don't know all the traits of that person that it should always be near the front of the choices!  As it is right now it is random, and that doesn't help anybody!!! 

@canelacaliente , if the choices are better organized, than that will greatly reduce the amount of time wading through them!  "Friendly" socials is such a large category that it has become a dumping ground for all the interactions that don't fit neatly anywhere else.  By having sub-categories, we can eliminate a bunch of options simply by not clicking on the sub-category head! So, if you want only work-related socials, you would just click on that sub-category and ignore the other sub-categories like "weather" , "vampires" , "family", "neighborhood", "creative", etc. This would streamline it so much!  I think we need organization, not elimination! 

I also think having the choices off to the side might interfere with our action queue icons. The right side would be better though.  However, I like the social choices to be right where I click when I click on a Sim to socialize with... I don't want to have to go back and forth with my mouse if I want to do multiple socials, clicking on the Sim and then going to the side of the screen over and over.  That would actually a bit longer. Plus, every version of the Sims has had the social menu as a pie menu.  And if they ever were going to change that, I think it would be best to do that in TS5 or some future version where they could design that from the beginning. 

And if we could have some sort of stabilized order, without a social being at the beginning of the pie menu, only to be pushed to the back at the next interaction or randomly disappearing, then that would be a great help!  😅

[JonaO703]

@PugLove888 I didn't even think about the whims, mainly since I don't have them turned on in my game. I tried it once and started getting lost in trying to achieve them.  Also, I think if lists were generated, they should not be persistent.  They should pop up and go away just like they do now.  Maybe players could be given an option of what menu layout they want to use in gameplay options.

@canelacaliente I agree perhaps sub-menus could lead to a problem similar to the one we have now.  I do think the friendly socials need to be broken up, though.  Again, I like your idea of a list to help navigate them.  There are already lists / menus built into the game; food / drink ordering, rewards store.  I'm sure those could be modified and made a bit more compact to fit the social menu.  Maybe socials based on traits, career, specific packs, etc. could be given their own menus in the list icons as you suggested.

I was just looking at those gameplay options.  I always play with the TS4 social menu in lieu of enabling the "traditional" pie menu.  That menu is described as "grouping actions by type rather than contextual relevance."  I think part of the problem is that the "contextual relevance" seems to be off a bit.  Regardless of any changes made to the layout, whatever part of the game that governs the display of social options needs to be tweaked.  I have no idea what the game considers to be relevant to the situational context but many times, the initial socials don't fit at all.  The Winterfest holiday socials are a good example.  Often, "complain about Winterfest" is the only one that pops up in the initial menu.  The others like "sing" and "share spirit" are usually buried four to five levels deep.  I've noticed on dates, "deep conversation" is one of the requirements but that was changed to "share stories of personal challenges" and that one is almost always in the fifth or sixth menu.  (By the way, I really would like that date requirement to be changed to match the "share stories" verbiage but I guess that's a topic for a different thread.)