Long distance friend LTR not working for magician?

[ZacSz]

Sigh, I seem to be having a whole lot of glitches and general issues lately. So I thank you all in advance for once again coming to the rescue. I'll say off the bat this may or may not be a glitch, but it sure seems like it.

It involves a sim of mine who is both a magician and has the social butterfly and charismatic traits. So just by performing he makes lots of acquaintances, and sometimes automatic friends (autofriends began once he reached level 3 or 4 of the profession). I'm actually not sure if this is due to the social butterfly trait, the career, or both, as I'm new to Showtime but... Doesn't really matter. He was inadvertently making more friends than he could possibly even call to chat to keep the relationship bar up and kept getting really bummed when many of them lapsed to "distant" status (not to mention trying to avoid the "it's like I'm invisible" moodlet).

So I got the Long Distance Friend LTR, which I don't think I've ever gotten. At first, it went okay, and didnt get any notices about failed friendships for a while. Then, I'd get notices that he and so-and-so were no longer friends, he'd get the "lost a friend" moodlet, but it would go away pretty swiftly. I never actually checked the relationship bar of that friend after that, though, so I don't know what it looked like in those instances. That happened a few times.

Now when he loses friends he once again gets the full 24 hours of "lost a friend" moodlet, although it still seems to be happening more slowly than it would without the LTR. He has a ton of friends (inc. good, best and old friends) and really only has time for 10 of them or so at this point in his career/life. I lost track of how many friends he has exactly, but I fulfilled the wish to have 25 a while ago.

Does this sound right? I mean, all thats going on with the LTR that may or may not be rewarding. I was under the impression Long Distance Friend STOPPED the decay of relationships, or does it only slow it down? Does it only last for so long? Or is something else going on? Might it have something to do with the fact some of these friends were made literally without ever having had a conversation, but only through performing for tips and gigs? I know some of them my sim still hasn't spoken to.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[Ricalynn]

Do you have late night?  Is your magician a celebrity?  Has he gotten the moodlet that means he's been slandered or got caught?

[Ausette]

Hi ZacSz, I've been getting the same thing. I think it's because Long-Distance Friend prevents the passive decay of relationships with time, but not the lowering of relationship that comes with active negative interaction. With Showtime performances, any mistakes your magician makes onstage will count as active negative interaction, so they'll lower the relationship of audience members and bump them back down to acquaintances.

[ZacSz]

Rica, he's a celebrity but he hasn't been slandered or caught doing something wrong. TBH I loathe the celebrity feature so all of his points happened as I went along, not on purpose. I realize that doesn't prevent slandering, just saying. I just want my agent to stop asking me to lose weight!!!

Ausette, I that may very well be it! I'll have to keep a closer eye on it next time, but it did seem like all of the notifications popped up during performances. It's totally possible it happened after mishaps and I just didn't put two and two together. Do you know how much of a hit a relationship takes from an onstage fail? The only curious thing is he lost one or two friends that had high relationship bars so that strikes me as a long way down from one bad trick, though he didn't actually ever spend time with them. I think the others he lost were just barely his friends.

I have taken a break from actively playing as I'm building him a nice new house in a different file, but I will report back. Of course now that he's at level 10 he's making far less mistakes and only has two gigs a week, but I'm sure there will be another blunder some time.

Thank you both!