Laundry Day Gameplay Rebalance

Laundry Day  is one of the more interesting additions in terms of introducing chores and domestic maintenance into the game. However, it immediately reinforces the same core design issue by attaching a large number of mostly irrelevant or illogical moodlets to every Sim, regardless of personality.

Instead of deepening gameplay, it adds more universal emotional noise.

I reworked the system to separate mechanics from emotion.

The original EA moodlets are now hidden. What remains for all Sims are mechanical effects rather than emotional ones:

Wearing clean clothes slows hygiene decay and slightly improves relationship gain.

Wearing dirty clothes increases hygiene decay and reduces relationship gain.

Wearing warm clothes reduces the impact of cold weather (if Seasons is installed).

The visible emotional buffs were cloned and filtered through traits. Reactions now depend on personality:

Only Neat Sims gain happiness from wearing clean clothes.

Only Snob Sims feel embarrassed wearing used clothes.

Slob Sims are largely indifferent to minor grime.

Other Sims still get the negative effects but no visual positive ones.

I also added visual effects to certain states, for example, foul-smelling clothes now trigger the appropriate “stinky” visual effect. Idle reactions tied to laundry were removed.

While working through the files, I discovered that Maxis had implemented a framework for consequences tied to neglecting laundry, but it never made it into the final product.

I restored and completed that system.

If laundry is ignored for too long, one Sim in the household will become Tense due to the lack of clean clothes. This state also generates a whim to do the laundry, creating a clear objective for the player. Lazy and Slob Sims are excluded.