Disabling certain features is always an option, of course, but I think it would be nice to have an option for people who play on long lifespan (or aging off) that runs the stories tests less often. If the game adapted to the lifespan settings, these players could still have stories babies, just not as many as in a normal/short lifespan game.
I'm in agreement with this. I had to turn many of the features off because I too found that the frequency is way too much. I play with long life span (or aging off) and in like 25-30 sim days (toddler lifespan is 32 days just for comparison) there were several households that just exploded with babies, filling the whole family. Also I have around 2 deaths each day though I don't really mind those especially with the amount of breeding they have done lol. I do really like the feature but I now kinda have to just keep turning it on and off as a workaround for the frequency.
Its kinda cute how people feel compelled to add toddler beds and pet bowls....I just assume the house is in limbo and if I dont ever play them they wont know what they are missing!LOL
Your assumption would be entirely right. Both are entirely unneeded in homes that don't have played households.
I just add the pet bowls so that the pets don't starve when I visit those sims at home because visiting unplayed sims is something I actually do pretty frequently. I didn't bother with toddler beds though...I don't visit sims in the middle of the night so the toddlers will be fine. They can nap on the couch.
I do that too, though in my case they rather specifically are midnight visits since it's mostly with my "insatiable thirst" vampire who has a habit of doing some night rounds to fill his appetite.
Just recently he managed to enter a house which had 4 babies who all decided to be starving at the same time and 2 (3?) of the cribs were even positioned so that the parents couldn't even do anything but he could because he can teleport but he really wasn't in the mood to play the hero (again) so he was like "Aww heck no!" and bolted . If he happens upon this house again maybe he'll just go and age them up like this weird helpful/harmful intruder he kinda already is. Perhaps he'll start carrying around pet bowls in his pockets next lol.
Besides turning fill empty lots off, I also remove the steps leading to the doors. I remove the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, too. I haven't yet experienced much by way of NS, but then I never changed it until recently. It was on the default disabled setting. We shall see if this older method proves true, still. Best of luck. We had all kinds of problems with the Sims3 Story Progression, as well. I do wish the Team would give a careful look to how Twallen (NRaas, Industries) created a far better Story Progression mod.
@MsKatieRose, you still aren't understanding what I've been trying to explain to you. Death and culling are not the same thing, yet you keep talking about death without acknowledging that the sim could have been culled while still alive. Which was what I was trying to explain to you.
No matter how they tweak or fix neighborhood stories, culling is still something that can happen because it is not part of neighborhood stories.
Those of you who have not had unplayed sims having babies and adoptions previous to NS being added may not have had much experience seeing culling happen in your game but now you might want to learn more about it because no matter what they do to 'fix' neighborhood stories, it's going to be more likely unless you carefully balance populations such that households do not get new additions without there first being a death.
I'm trying to help you, not disagree with your complaints about NS, because right now you are most clearly not aware of culling and it's effects.
That's incorrect as I never asked for your help. So feel free to move on to a thread you can better understand what the discussion is about, lol.
You’re the one who’s not understanding though, your Nancy Landgraab townie didn’t die, she was cullled, a.k.a. randomly deleted from the game because the number of sims in your saves exceeded whatever the cap is. You can choose to protect sim by clicking the heart in household management safely up to 200 sims, or you can’t do fewer or you can choose unlimited which can cause bloat that brings its own set of troubles line crashes. Death is completely different from culling, death comes with a notification or at least an urn or a headstone. Culling has none of those things a sim is or sims are picked at random if they aren’t in the my household section of the bin and poof they’re just gone.
@MsKatieRose I couldn’t agree with the last sentence of your last post more!
So what I've done with one family that had two babies was just delete one baby in manage households. I moved the surplus baby to a 'not in world ' household then deleted that household.
I said this in another thread, and I'll mention it again here: Why can't we just have speed options? Like Slow, Normal, and Fast.
I'd also love more toggles. For examples, toggles to set the maximum number of babies and pets a household can have. Or, maximum sims who can die from unexpected ways.
I do like that they added Neighborhood Stories, and I love the customization for different households. But, there needs to be more Settings to adjust it to how simmers play.
Ideally, I think there should be a whole screen in Settings for Neighborhood Stories where we can individually tweak features to our liking.
Right now it feels like we're testing a new feature.
I hope they continue to make Neighborhood stories more customizable for different players.
Yea I don’t necessarily want anything adjusted I just wish I knew what happened to Eliza Pancakes. That said, I should have marked their house as one of my own and adjusted the settings a bit. Even if they decided to add major life events to say, a sims notebook or something, if they did that for every single sim in the game, I imagine the data load would be overwhelming.
Overall I love this patch, but I do play with aging off and have noticed some families near max. I did turn the child adoptions off for now at least. I want adoptions but I feel like they go crazy when left in all the time.I will likely switch them back on at a later time but only for a short while.
No matter how they tweak or fix neighborhood stories, culling is still something that can happen because it is not part of neighborhood stories.
Those of you who have not had unplayed sims having babies and adoptions previous to NS being added may not have had much experience seeing culling happen in your game but now you might want to learn more about it because no matter what they do to 'fix' neighborhood stories, it's going to be more likely unless you carefully balance populations such that households do not get new additions without there first being a death.
I'm trying to help you, not disagree with your complaints about NS, because right now you are most clearly not aware of culling and it's effects.
This is very helpful advice, thank you. I always have aging off, and I hadn't considered the baby explosion could lead to more culling, which I never used to see before. I may disable this feature for a bit as it's forcing me to use up my time to manage households rather than actual playing or building, which I would much prefer to do
I do feel it needs some tweaking. I let mine run wild for all unplayed sims just to see what would happen. At this point, all of the premades are dead or just gone - a few have some relatives left. There were gravestones left at least at some homes that my sims visited, but they are all piled up, stuck together. And nearly every sim my sims speak to now is sad and have the console option from all the deaths.
Since it does not marry sims and it is quite rare to see any married sims created by the game, it all eventually just stops as far as new babies being born at least. There would still be adoptions though.
One of the things I dislike is that often, babies or adoptions are added to a sim or sims that will die soon (like elders) so the kids/pets will just be culled unless at least one of the kids make it to teen before the adults die. So what is the point of adding them just for them to disappear a few days later?
I do think it is too aggressive with the deaths and babies/adoptions. Also, only saw dogs adopted, never cats.
I also got the code 0 error when trying to save - turning off the 'join a new career' did help with that though.
I generally play rotationally and with aging off, so at least new babies in neighborhood stories would need to be turned of for many of my games or there would just be this huge pile up of babies that can never grow up!
So what I've done with one family that had two babies was just delete one baby in manage households. I moved the surplus baby to a 'not in world ' household then deleted that household.
Good to know, thanks for that tip! I have several families that have three to five babies and I wasn't sure of the easiest way to fix this.
So what I've done with one family that had two babies was just delete one baby in manage households. I moved the surplus baby to a 'not in world ' household then deleted that household.
Good to know, thanks for that tip! I have several families that have three to five babies and I wasn't sure of the easiest way to fix this.
I usually delete all the not in world households that the game adds but now I plan on keeping a couple just in case.
I'm definitely going to double-check my settings. Thanks for reminding me about MCCC pet pregnancy, I was so focused on the pet population explosion being from NS I actually forgot about pet pregnancy settings. I won't be too surprised if the settings I had have been reset; like I said it's happened before with other things. A bit irksome, but nothing I can't cope with. I'd love to know why it's happening, though.
Same thing happened to me. I completely forgot about it because it had basically stopped generating new kittens/puppies but now that NS added new pets to the world, MCCC found new targets for the pet pregnancies. Though I actually find e.g. this outcome rather fitting considering the character haha.
After going through all worlds in just one save and finding so many changes, I'm pretty sure I didn't get notices for everything. I was checking every day and making notes of each NS change, but I discovered more changes than I'd read about. And there were larger households moved into smaller homes or only one sim moved into huge houses. In fact, most of the changes didn't take into account the home size at all. And the babies! Way too many. This is all in less than a sim week.
I understand that NPCs go into stasis until active sims visit the lot. But for me, the way NS is set up breaks immersion the minute my sims step foot in those houses. So what's the point of story progression then? It's totally unrealistic. Why oh why must The Sims always go overboard for every feature! 😠
@Thrior Those 4 bassinets dropped in that one bedroom! I don't even think the adults could get to the bed to even make those babies! They must have used the shower. 😆
@Stormkeep I didn't realize MCCC had pet pregnancies on as the default. Now I'll need to go in and check my default settings!
@Thrior Those 4 bassinets dropped in that one bedroom! I don't even think the adults could get to the bed to even make those babies! They must have used the shower. 😆
Pfft, you're right. Didn't even think of that. What a disaster household.
Btw NS now decided to kill off the mother so now there's a single father taking care of all of these 4 babies (and 1 child if I remember right). I must admit I'm kind of invested now so I might actually try and play this family myself.
/EDIT: Ok, I checked it out. Father and 6 kids. I think this is going to make a great story so I'll take them under my protection. (Too bad I don't remember what was the supposed reason of death for the mother.)
(Too bad I don't remember what was the supposed reason of death for the mother.)
Looks like childbirth to me. Imagine having that many babies all in a row. Repetition of the surgery-machine T-pose glitch alone would probably be a lot for a sim to handle, and that's assuming she went to the hospital in the first place.
(Too bad I don't remember what was the supposed reason of death for the mother.)
Looks like childbirth to me. Imagine having that many babies all in a row. Repetition of the surgery-machine T-pose glitch alone would probably be a lot for a sim to handle, and that's assuming she went to the hospital in the first place.
Oh no . Truthful though, because the doctor(s) repeatedly asserting dominance was enough for me to avoid hospital births but these unplayed families know no better.
@wahini2024 Yup, seeing these prospects I think I'm gonna have fun with this challenge . Btw, not being sarcastic since I legit enjoy challenge.
If a sim dies by story progression, does that sim still remain in family trees and the relationship panel? If a sim in one household dies, does the remaining sims in the household still have any ties to the sim that died?
The dead-by-accident-feature sounds fun but I am still trying to figure out how it works.
@SilentKitty, for me at least, they not only remain in family trees and relationship panels, but they leave a ghost behind.
The people talking about unplayed sims just going "poof" and vanishing, imo, are people who never had culling hit their games before, or at least not often, and who are seeing it now due to the additional births caused by NS increasing their total sim count. Sims going "poof" and vanishing from both the game and relationship panels (and family trees in some cases) sure sounds exactly like culling, not death.
The only thing that sims killed by the accidental deaths aren't doing, which (imo) they should is adding a moodlet to sims that should be sad about it, like they would if they died in LIVE mode.
Adoption has gone totally nuts in my game so I turned it off for most households. I am disappointed that I have no idea what happened to Eliza Pancakes. I couple sim days ago she was there and then it was like she never existed. I assumed she died but I didn't get any kind of notification on the neighborhood stories updates. I don't know if it was because I was playing a sim that didn't live in Willow Creek or what. I visited Bob. The house seems so big when he is there by himself.
He is not sad about her being gone, there is no urn, no trace that she ever existed. She doesn't even show up in his family tree as a sim that has died. That bums me out, a lot. She's not in his relationship panel at all. Completely scrubbed. I'm going to have to play his household just to make sure he remarries and has a nice life. I feel bad for him, I was hoping the game would make them have kids but nope, it just erased Eliza all together.
This happened to the Goth Family for My game. I am noticing the longer I play that the Regular Families are vanishing and being replaced with odd Random Sims. I am in the middle of micro managing every world and household right now to get Neighborhood stories under control. Turn off Move In/Move out to control losing Your important Sims. It is yet to be seen if tweaking the controls work or not.
They need to add a Speed setting to Neighborhood Stories. Slow, Medium, Fast.
From what others have said, some things occur way too often. I only have it enabled for Random Deaths and Retiring, but I hope there aren't too many sims dying all the time because of it.
Yeah , I think they should enable a speed to the story progression too and also place a limit of babies, adoptions, and pets on a family.
On my main rotational save I have stories disabled. But on my other saves, I’d like to have a limit as to how many babies, pets and adoptions can happen in each family. I guess I could turn on the story progression for a day or two at a time and then turn it off. I have opened up babies, an adoptions just to certain families on my stories I opted in on story progression, but I still don’t want them having 4 babies in a week, or even a whole bunch of pets or adoptions.
It seems to function very closely to the MCCC story telling. So no, I like it very much, this is exactly what I wanted and also tells me this is very much playtested.
Btw, a bug makes a lot of babies dark skinned despite not actually being that. It has nothing to do with this patch.
Actually I don't think it is a bug that makes some kids or babies dark skinned. I think the game does a random pick from the skin tone packs just like it does everything else when making a new Sim and the Skin Tones have more variety in a dark shade then in a light shade so its a higher chance of that skin tone being chosen. I have a few Dark Skinned Families that had a light skinned blonde haired baby. It's the Sims, lol.
@Thrior When NS killed off a sim in my game, I looked to see if she was still in the family tree and she was. If you mouse over her, it will show the cause of death.
It's been a while since I had new babies in my game.
Does the skin tones of these babies change when they age up to toddler? Does it happen with most births?
Because my gameplay is soo detailed, having everyone going hog wild doing their own thing is upstaging. TOO MUCH!! I knew it was going to be a problem because the system basically existed before they did the update. It is actually MCCC controls added for gameplayers who do not want to use mods and/or are console players. Its a good idea to give gameplayers the control.
Comments
I do that too, though in my case they rather specifically are midnight visits since it's mostly with my "insatiable thirst" vampire who has a habit of doing some night rounds to fill his appetite.
Just recently he managed to enter a house which had 4 babies who all decided to be starving at the same time and 2 (3?) of the cribs were even positioned so that the parents couldn't even do anything but he could because he can teleport but he really wasn't in the mood to play the hero (again) so he was like "Aww heck no!" and bolted
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You’re the one who’s not understanding though, your Nancy Landgraab townie didn’t die, she was cullled, a.k.a. randomly deleted from the game because the number of sims in your saves exceeded whatever the cap is. You can choose to protect sim by clicking the heart in household management safely up to 200 sims, or you can’t do fewer or you can choose unlimited which can cause bloat that brings its own set of troubles line crashes. Death is completely different from culling, death comes with a notification or at least an urn or a headstone. Culling has none of those things a sim is or sims are picked at random if they aren’t in the my household section of the bin and poof they’re just gone.
@MsKatieRose I couldn’t agree with the last sentence of your last post more!
I'd also love more toggles. For examples, toggles to set the maximum number of babies and pets a household can have. Or, maximum sims who can die from unexpected ways.
I do like that they added Neighborhood Stories, and I love the customization for different households. But, there needs to be more Settings to adjust it to how simmers play.
Ideally, I think there should be a whole screen in Settings for Neighborhood Stories where we can individually tweak features to our liking.
Right now it feels like we're testing a new feature.
I hope they continue to make Neighborhood stories more customizable for different players.
Overall I love this patch, but I do play with aging off and have noticed some families near max. I did turn the child adoptions off for now at least. I want adoptions but I feel like they go crazy when left in all the time.I will likely switch them back on at a later time but only for a short while.
This is very helpful advice, thank you. I always have aging off, and I hadn't considered the baby explosion could lead to more culling, which I never used to see before. I may disable this feature for a bit as it's forcing me to use up my time to manage households rather than actual playing or building, which I would much prefer to do
I do feel it needs some tweaking. I let mine run wild for all unplayed sims just to see what would happen. At this point, all of the premades are dead or just gone - a few have some relatives left. There were gravestones left at least at some homes that my sims visited, but they are all piled up, stuck together. And nearly every sim my sims speak to now is sad and have the console option from all the deaths.
Since it does not marry sims and it is quite rare to see any married sims created by the game, it all eventually just stops as far as new babies being born at least. There would still be adoptions though.
One of the things I dislike is that often, babies or adoptions are added to a sim or sims that will die soon (like elders) so the kids/pets will just be culled unless at least one of the kids make it to teen before the adults die. So what is the point of adding them just for them to disappear a few days later?
I do think it is too aggressive with the deaths and babies/adoptions. Also, only saw dogs adopted, never cats.
I also got the code 0 error when trying to save - turning off the 'join a new career' did help with that though.
I generally play rotationally and with aging off, so at least new babies in neighborhood stories would need to be turned of for many of my games or there would just be this huge pile up of babies that can never grow up!
Good to know, thanks for that tip! I have several families that have three to five babies and I wasn't sure of the easiest way to fix this.
I usually delete all the not in world households that the game adds but now I plan on keeping a couple just in case.
Same thing happened to me. I completely forgot about it because it had basically stopped generating new kittens/puppies but now that NS added new pets to the world, MCCC found new targets for the pet pregnancies. Though I actually find e.g. this outcome rather fitting considering the character haha.
I understand that NPCs go into stasis until active sims visit the lot. But for me, the way NS is set up breaks immersion the minute my sims step foot in those houses. So what's the point of story progression then? It's totally unrealistic. Why oh why must The Sims always go overboard for every feature! 😠
@Thrior Those 4 bassinets dropped in that one bedroom! I don't even think the adults could get to the bed to even make those babies! They must have used the shower. 😆
@Stormkeep I didn't realize MCCC had pet pregnancies on as the default. Now I'll need to go in and check my default settings!
Btw NS now decided to kill off the mother so now there's a single father taking care of all of these 4 babies (and 1 child if I remember right). I must admit I'm kind of invested now so I might actually try and play this family myself.
/EDIT: Ok, I checked it out. Father and 6 kids. I think this is going to make a great story so I'll take them under my protection. (Too bad I don't remember what was the supposed reason of death for the mother.)
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
Oh no
@wahini2024 Yup, seeing these prospects I think I'm gonna have fun with this challenge
If a sim dies by story progression, does that sim still remain in family trees and the relationship panel? If a sim in one household dies, does the remaining sims in the household still have any ties to the sim that died?
The dead-by-accident-feature sounds fun but I am still trying to figure out how it works.
The people talking about unplayed sims just going "poof" and vanishing, imo, are people who never had culling hit their games before, or at least not often, and who are seeing it now due to the additional births caused by NS increasing their total sim count. Sims going "poof" and vanishing from both the game and relationship panels (and family trees in some cases) sure sounds exactly like culling, not death.
The only thing that sims killed by the accidental deaths aren't doing, which (imo) they should is adding a moodlet to sims that should be sad about it, like they would if they died in LIVE mode.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
This happened to the Goth Family for My game. I am noticing the longer I play that the Regular Families are vanishing and being replaced with odd Random Sims. I am in the middle of micro managing every world and household right now to get Neighborhood stories under control. Turn off Move In/Move out to control losing Your important Sims. It is yet to be seen if tweaking the controls work or not.
Yeah , I think they should enable a speed to the story progression too and also place a limit of babies, adoptions, and pets on a family.
On my main rotational save I have stories disabled. But on my other saves, I’d like to have a limit as to how many babies, pets and adoptions can happen in each family. I guess I could turn on the story progression for a day or two at a time and then turn it off. I have opened up babies, an adoptions just to certain families on my stories I opted in on story progression, but I still don’t want them having 4 babies in a week, or even a whole bunch of pets or adoptions.
Actually I don't think it is a bug that makes some kids or babies dark skinned. I think the game does a random pick from the skin tone packs just like it does everything else when making a new Sim and the Skin Tones have more variety in a dark shade then in a light shade so its a higher chance of that skin tone being chosen. I have a few Dark Skinned Families that had a light skinned blonde haired baby. It's the Sims, lol.
Does the skin tones of these babies change when they age up to toddler? Does it happen with most births?
Because my gameplay is soo detailed, having everyone going hog wild doing their own thing is upstaging. TOO MUCH!! I knew it was going to be a problem because the system basically existed before they did the update. It is actually MCCC controls added for gameplayers who do not want to use mods and/or are console players. Its a good idea to give gameplayers the control.
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