Drama Princess chooses a goal out of all the opportunities in the game world by filtering the list of opportunities through various parameters. One of the more important filters is to choose the opportunities that are most compatible with the relationship that the actor has with the object that offers the opportunity (“Filter of Intimacy”). This way, the actor doesn’t start kissing a character that they kicked previously (or at least it’s very unlikely ;)).
All opportunities have an Intimacy level that expresses which type of relationship is required to choose this opportunity as a goal. This way, they get arranged in order: from interactions suitable for enemies all the way up to interactions suitable for lovers. When dealing with the extreme emotions, it’s fairly easy to say what relationship the interaction suits (as in the kicking or kissing example above). But when the interactions are somewhat neutral, it’s hard to match them up. Does sitting on a bench require a better relationship with it than lying on it? Or sitting on a chair? Intimacy values for neutral interactions are more or less arbitrary and shouldn’t be taken as seriously by the Filter of Intimacy as the interactions that do explicitly require love or hate.
When the Intimacy value of opportunities is extreme, the Filter of Intimacy will require a better match with the affection that the actor feels for the object. The closer the Intimacy gets to neutral, the more loose the match is allowed to be.
A similar thing will need to happen in the Emotion System where the effect of the interaction is evaluated: neutral interactions shouldn’t have as deep an impact on the relationship as extreme ones. Or the effect of any interaction should be more severe if the Affection is more extreme. We’ll see.