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Sims 4 Neighborhood Stories: A Mistake From EA?
Frogeems
Posts: 57 Member
I cannot be the only person with this opinion:
The Sims has always been a series where you are supposed to build your idea of a perfect neighborhood with your unique sims. Doesn't the neighborhood stories update ruin this? I among many people agree that, like in TS3, there should be the option to disable neighborhood stories. Imagine you, like many players, have spent countless hours raising sims' skills, relationships, careers, essentially making them perfect in your view. And then, an autonomy update comes along. Now Sim You is calling up your active household members, of which they barely know, asking if they should have a baby or quit their career they've worked so hard for.
Would you let your neighbor make these insane life choices for you? No. Obviously not. So why is there no toggle off for this mode? I firmly believe that this was a huge mistake on behalf of EA. I would like to hear the opinions of this community; tell me what you think of this update.
The Sims has always been a series where you are supposed to build your idea of a perfect neighborhood with your unique sims. Doesn't the neighborhood stories update ruin this? I among many people agree that, like in TS3, there should be the option to disable neighborhood stories. Imagine you, like many players, have spent countless hours raising sims' skills, relationships, careers, essentially making them perfect in your view. And then, an autonomy update comes along. Now Sim You is calling up your active household members, of which they barely know, asking if they should have a baby or quit their career they've worked so hard for.
Would you let your neighbor make these insane life choices for you? No. Obviously not. So why is there no toggle off for this mode? I firmly believe that this was a huge mistake on behalf of EA. I would like to hear the opinions of this community; tell me what you think of this update.
Post edited by EA_Cade on
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I haven't played much since the update, but my Sims haven't gotten any calls from neighbors at all. I had one odd interaction between Sims in my household that seemed like it came with the update, but the interaction was cute and funny.
I don't want an answering machine, because I don't think the data from missed calls is particularly important and would rather the game not keep track of that for a ton of Sims.
After playing with it for a while, though, I have to say I find it rather unintrusive and easy to manage. Neighbours will only call after you've socialised with them, and even then, only once until you meet with them again. If you don't like the life changes they're proposing, you can just say no, and in my experience, they will always heed your advice. One sim even turned down his "dream job" after I told him to, because... I gave you the job you already have because that is your dream job, who are you to disagree with my decisions, you puny little pixel person??
However, if they're planning on extending this feature to make it more complex and less avoidable in the future, I hope an OFF button will eventually be introduced. As it is now, I don't have a problem with it.
Something wicked this way comes!
I don't use MCCC.
Personally, I think the sims4 system overall with phonecalls and notifications in the upper right is not a great system...I never liked it. It's immersion breaking and intrusive and some calls feels "fake", sims are calling you to say "this sim is pretty cool!" and things like that. Whats the point? It will only add to all the phonecalls that we are already getting. Like this one.
I think they should add game options for neighborhood stories, not having the player saying "no" for phonecalls. I always preferred it the way MC Command Center did it where it offered options for the player to customize their game.
this is especially frustrating with randomized townies bloating the game and these spammy phone calls for absolutely everything
i think there should be turn off phone calls toggle and it could have separate check box for separate phone call types like if you want school messages but no party invites that should be possible without taking out packs from your game
same goes for this
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And you should be able to turn it off.
Sometimes I am open to progression and sometimes I just want to focus on what I want to do without any interruptions.
It would be nice if I could shut the phone off anyway.
But I'm not, because there's no one "right" way to play the Sims.
I do agree that a clear "off" button for Neighborhood stories would be good for those people who do want to carefully craft their neighborhoods and worlds. And there definitely needs to be some tweaking on the coding for who gets what kind of calls from whom. Calls involving other members of the same household shouldn't happen. But I also trust that they're working on making improvements and taking feedback as people complain about things that don't work right for them.
But that doesn't mean that Neighborhood Stories was a mistake. There are a lot of people who did want Story Progression, and MCCC isn't a viable solution for everyone. I'm playing vanilla now, but I have used it in the past and I certainly prefer it over either letting the world slowly empty as families aged up and died off without kids or else micromanaging the whole world. I'm hoping that with future updates, Neighborhood Stories will allow further refinement, with out the random and occasionally nonsensical calls. And I won't have to micromanage the other families in order to play for multiple generations.
I guess the pop ups could be annoying, but so long as there are not actually autonomous changes, I do not care. Plus we've been told toggles (and deeper features with them) are coming later.
So really don't think it is a misstep or a step back because it is giving a lot of people what they wanted. Something akin to some of the really popular mods, and something that had been done in the past (story progression). I'm looking forward to the toggles, too, and am terrified of some of the bugs that will happen now that there is code for these autonomous changes, but I do agree in principal a pop up is a fairly opt in opt out way to start this.
I hope they adopt all these fixes and new ideas @Elliandre or something like them
The smart thing would have been to wait until they had a running version that everyone can live with. A "bypass played households" option is a must have. "Unplayed only" should apply for far more things anyway (like inactive households getting jobs, i think in an unmodded game played households aren't exempted from getting forced into careers as if they were townies).
From that survey Resultat, they also saw how a lot of people wanted to have control over these Changes, so they made it as a phone call system that allows opting out.
And while they Mist have thought they would make everyone happy that way, the vast majority was disappointed. Some because the system wenn too far, Others because ist didn't go far enough.
The only way this can be done in a sensible way is adding toggles, but as I heard these are planned to be added.
It's an endeavour to add story progression at this time because it is so difficult for EA to compete with the impressive story progression Mods for TS3 and TS4. And the there also are players who were grateful that TS4 didn't come with Story progression and nie feel betrayed because there's no complete opt out atm.
I've been worried about this happening the Moment they releases that survey - but honestly, it could have been even worden, so I'm not complaining.
Edited because of weird auto correction.
Tales From The Myst
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Agreed. I don't want to use this for my gameplay but I defintely don't think the feature itself is a mistake. However, it does seem that it was a poor judgement call not to wait until it could be released in its final form.
Because I can't; I keep all sigs turned off.
This is only Part 1. The 2nd Update to Story Progression is coming sometimes next year probably by March or April at the latest.
They are adding toggles so that rotational players are pleased as well. This first release was probably to work out initial bugs and problems instead of implementing the whole thing with a mountain of problems. This way they can access what people do and do not like about it so far.
I actually kind of like the story progression so far it's not invasive. It's easy to say no and I enjoy more calls that are not spam. Would definitely love to see it more deeply integrated and interactive. Like letting us wedding plan for example. Instant marriage is no fun.
The only problem I see with the whole thing is just like always they try so hard to please both sides that no one ends up happy. Just like the nerfed jealousy. They tried to make it so neutral that now those of us who liked the extremes can no longer enjoy it. And 9 out 10 those who were complaining don't even use it because it does nothing now.
Perhaps it will get better once the toggles are fully implemented. But as it stands right now neither rotational or ts3 story progression lovers are happy.
Personally, I do wish the time and effort could be spent on new features and interactions instead of trying to turn this into ts3. But as a rotational player who likes full control I'm cool with it so far.
Yeah, I've seen that one before. It happened a couple of times when one of the sims in a couple proposed to the other too soon after officially becoming boyfriend/girlfriend, boyfriend/boyfriend, etc.
Edit: I mean that I've seen these before the Neighborhood Stories thing was even announced, in case anyone wonders if it's part of that.
Because I can't; I keep all sigs turned off.
I've never seen it in my game, but I've seen others have it in theirs, long before NS was announced.
And no, I do not think it is a mistake, to be in topic.
Sea may rise, sky may fall, My love will never die..
My heart, my heart, My drowning heart, Oh all the tears I've cried
Oh I may weep forevermore, My love will never die..
I hope they add more options too. I used to make a pet store in Sims 2 so I could give Sims pets through gameplay. I would be more likely to adopt the pet if my Sim's friend found it I think it would be really fun. And they can even call my Sim about an orphan maybe I would adopt a kid too lol.