Eliminating "X is filthy rich!" gossip? [Solved - ish]

[analect]

I'm attempting my first xml tweak, so I'm probably missing something very basic here (and my terminology is probably all wrong), but I'd be really grateful for any help.

I get irrationally irritated by sims fixating on the "X is broke/filthy rich!" gossip, so I'm trying to reduce its frequency. Looking at the gossip xml, each piece of data is ranked like this:

<Name></Name>
<Category></Category>
<Interestingness></Interestingness>
<TraitsWhichEncourage></TraitsWhichEncourage>
<TraitsWhichRestrict></TraitsWhichRestrict>

Events such as births and adoptions have 1000 Interestingness, while "LotsOfMoney" and "RanOutOfMoney" have 500. I figured, if I set Interestingness at a lower value, it would reduce the prevalence of "X is filthy rich!" gossip, even in new neighborhoods where not much gossip-worthy has happened yet (and the subjects of "X is rich" are inevitably NPCs who are only wealthy because they're members of the giant and invisible NPC household...).

I also thought - from looking at other xml files in the gameplay data - that setting Interestingness to -1 would effectively cause sims to ignore the option, but it doesn't. Negative values seem to have no effect at all, which I find confusing.

Changing the Interestingness value to 10 does reduce the frequency a lot, but now I'm really curious: can I remove "filthy rich" completely? Is it possible? And what am I doing wrong?

[JustAnotherSimsFan]

Have you tried setting interestingness to 0 to see if that works?

If that doesn't work then you could try removing the LotsOfMoney and RanOutOfMoney sections completely.

E.g. remove this part from the xml file.

<Data>
<Name>LotsOfMoney</Name>
<Category>Materialist</Category>
<Interestingness>500</Interestingness>
<TraitsWhichEncourage>Ambitious, Frugal, Snob</TraitsWhichEncourage>
</Data>
<Data>
<Name>RanOutOfMoney</Name>
<Category>Materialist</Category>
<Interestingness>500</Interestingness>
<TraitsWhichEncourage>Ambitious, Evil, Frugal, MeanSpirited, Snob</TraitsWhichEncourage>
</Data>

I've done this with the traits xml file to remove traits i didn't want in my game and i haven't experienced any problems in my game doing this.

You might also need to remove this part of the gossip xml file as well. But i think just removing the data part above should do it.

<Text>
<Name>LotsOfMoney</Name>
<Text>GossipLotsOfMoney</Text>
</Text>
<Text>
<Name>RanOutOfMoney</Name>
<Text>GossipRanOutOfMoney</Text>
</Text>

[analect]

Thanks for the suggestions. Weirdly, setting the value to 0 doesn't seem to reduce it all. (And, for the record, yes, I'm clearing caches and everything prior to testing.)

I tried your idea of removing the references completely, including the <Text></Text> bits. Unfortunately, that's just triggering a script error every time a sim uses the Gossip interaction, and resetting the active (gossiping) sim.

According to the output of Twallan's ErrorTrap, "The given key was not present in the dictionary". I'm not exactly adept at deciphering the info generated there, but maybe there's another file that needs modifying?

I'm very confused. I'd also be really intrigued to hear anything anyone knows about this 'Interestingness' value.

[JustAnotherSimsFan]

No problem happy to try and help. That is weird how setting interestingness to 0 doesn't reduce it but setting it to 10 does. Anyway sorry my suggestion didn't work and hope it didn't mess up your game in anyway.

Hope you find a solution soon analect :)

[Shimrod101]

I would suggest trying to do it this way; leave the Data fields alone and in the Text sections replace the actual text for the 3 thingies you want to alter.

<Text>
<Name>LotsOfMoney</Name>
<Text>GossipLotsOfMoney</Text>
</Text>
<Text>
<Name>RanOutOfMoney</Name>
<Text>GossipRanOutOfMoney</Text>
</Text>
<Text>
<Name>RanOutOfMoney</Name>
<Traits>Evil, MeanSpirited</Traits>
<Text>GossipRanOutOfMoneyBad</Text>
</Text>

So this line here: <Text>GossipLotsOfMoney</Text>

you replace on all 3 with for example this one:

<Text>GossipHotSpotSelected</Text>

What should happen when the dice roll chooses one of your 3 is that the text which the game uses will be the hot spot text. This is my presumption.

[analect]

Thanks, JustAnotherSimsFan.

And thank you, Shimrod - that did indeed look logical. I tried replacing the Text sections as you suggested... still getting a script error and the sim resetting, though.

Very odd. I'll poke about a bit more and report back. Open to all other suggestions!

[Shimrod101]

Then I would suggest trying the value 1 on the Interestingness, as this is probably the lowest valid value. Maybe this will then come up more seldom than the 10 value which you've tried.

I don't really know what this Interestingness value is, how this differs from when they use for example Weighted Chance in some other XML's; but it's providing a similar function.

[analect]

Success! As far as I can see, I've got it to work.

Setting the value to 1 or to 0 didn't reduce the frequency at all, which I found weird, but setting it to 0000 did, so it looks like maybe, in this instance, 'interestingness' is based on three or four digit values. Hmm.

I'll do a bit more testing, but thank you for the input.