You can have a shy Sim, and if you get him into a flirty emotional state, he’ll act in a very similar way than a Sim with the romantic trait in that emotional state. Emotions always override traits and Sims under one particular emotion behave the same way regardless of their traits. It would’ve required a much more complex system to make emotions and traits interact in a more realistic and meaningful way.

At the end of the day, traits act like attributes in role-playing games. They add certain modifiers to the way they behave, the speed at which they gain skills, their whims, but very little in terms of interactions and animations.

For comparison, a Sim with the frugal trait in TS3 would turn off the lights in the house automatically whenever they could to reduce the bill; they’d be able to clip coupons from newspapers to get discounts; they’d complain and get stressed when commanded to use slot machines; they wouldn’t tip musicians or other street artists on their own, and much, much more. I’ve played many hours of TS4 and I’ve never seen any trait to add this amount of behavior. Like I say, Sims behave mostly according to their current emotions with traits acting more like a modifier +/- for certain interactions. This is NOT arguable, it’s a fact.

I think this is the inherent flaw in Sims 4 – all sims are subject to the same emotions, only differentiated in frequency by traits. So traits don’t do NOTHING… but I think the issue is the traits need to be tweaked to add a system like the celebrity and vampire quirks and positives, or to not have such an impact on emotions… OR emotions need to be tweaked, which would be such a major rehaul I couldn’t even articulate it.

I think if more traits don’t solve it, a different aspect of personality needs to be implemented in conjunction with them.