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Has Neighborhood Stories Gone Wild In Your Game?

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  • FatTribble23FatTribble23 Posts: 845 Member
    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?

    @simgirl1010 The babies' skin tone is never wrong in live mode (at least not in my games) but only in the family portrait you see of sims in manage worlds. And in does change to the correct skin tone even there once they age up to toddler.
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  • ThriorThrior Posts: 612 Member
    babajayne wrote: »
    @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.
    Thanks for reminding me. Apparently their mother died by drowning.
    I also discovered that one of the babies is from an affair with another woman (I enabled same sex pregnancies with MCCC btw) while one is adopted. Or at least I guess so since there is only one parent listed. Ngl, I love the drama.
  • spend4zenspend4zen Posts: 244 Member
    Stormkeep wrote: »
    @MsKatieRose, as I already indicated, death is not a factor for culling. Live sims can be culled as well.

    If you have had births and/or adoptions turned on with neighborhood stories it may have increased your sim count enough for culling to happen. I'm sorry, but the fact that you think you somehow are immune from culling just because you don't have age progression on is wrong.
    It's your sim count not being high enough that is the only reason it hasn't occurred more frequently in the past. Ghosts get culled after a certain amount of time after death, but live sims get culled based on sim count.

    This is a good point and I am glad You made this post. This is something I did not know and should have picked up on considering I have put 2500+ hours into this game. I was wondering why the Goth family vanished. I think what everyone is upset about is the game Culls the Townies we know like the Pancakes and the Goths and then replaces them with Random NPC's who are now Townies. What was the point of killing of the Goths if the game code is just going to fill the house up with another random family? I have turned off Move In/Move out and Accidental Death/ adopting and babies for all Sims and All worlds right now until I get everything under control, lol. And it looks like I need to turn off join career also to avoid Error code 0. So.. Maybe just turn the whole thing off until I can fine tune each house and turn it back on now and then. It's a work in progress but I think it has potential to add fun to the game.
  • shellbemeshellbeme Posts: 2,086 Member
    What the..sims!? You think the game culled my Eliza Pancakes? Unforgivable!!!!! J/K but I bet you are right. I think I am going to insert the pancakes family from the gallery (with the toddler) to rectify my issue. This is a good reminder to double check the families you care about!
  • spend4zenspend4zen Posts: 244 Member
    At first Neighborhood Stories sounded like a way for EA to enhance gameplay. However, it appears this new feature has not been play tested at all.

    For example, after playing the game for a short time, I discovered that every town sim and/or their families had a lot of brown (?) newborn babies along with toddlers and pets in their household. While I expected to hear about some changes. I didn't expect this kind of extreme change. Some households had almost three newborns at once. All of which would be unrealistic in real life.

    So thus far, it has definitely made gameplay worse as I had to click on all these households and try to delete all these unwanted additions. Btw, you can't delete the newborns in CAS and still not sure if it worked since after I disabled the feature for all households, I got another message that mentioned how the Delgato family in Brindleton Bay recently added more babies to their household, lol.

    Let's hope EA fixes this as I'm starting to think this whole concept already needs a lot of tweaking or overhaul.

    Too many brown babies for you, huh? Just...wow. FYI, that's a game bug that's been around for a good while now that has nothing to do with Neighborhood Stories.

    Neighborhood Stories DOES NOT need to be tweaked, overhauled, or nerfed in any way. I have too many babies and pets in my game now due to MY neglecting to adjust settings to where they needed to be. I think we're all on a learning curve right now. When I turn NS back on, I'll be more wise about how I adjust the settings.

    Too many things get nerfed in this game because of a vocal minority squawking for it when it's actually their own ignorance that caused the issues.

    What @FatTribble23 said. .You need a award for that one. I am really tired of seeing things get removed or "toned down" bc of people complaining instead of fixing settings. And I swear I think the brown baby bug is just the way the Random CAS ends up picking a skin tone bc there are more choices in a darker shade then a lighter shade so its percentage/chance. It usually changes when the baby ages up and if not just use a cheat to fix it if it does not fit with the family or your story. As far as NS go's I think it could add to game play a lot, We just need to realize we need to adjust what happens with each household or just turn it off all together if You don't want to mess with it. And yes Culling is a thing I forgot about to until @Stormkeep reminded me about it with his post earlier. That explains where Eliza Pancake and the Goth's went when NS stared adding a million babies and pets bc I did not adjust anything with it at first.
  • JyotaiJyotai Posts: 505 Member
    shellbeme wrote: »
    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.

    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 sort of thing has happened to me a number of times before this neighborhood thing came out and I just assumed it was an MCCC tweak I needed to change.

    My solution when it hits a Sim I wanted to hold onto is to load up another game - export the sim to my library, and then pull them into my game and use cheats to put the right relationships back. When it's one of the sims made by my game (such as a townie I grew to like), I do the same with an old save.

    I don't use Discord because it doesn't support multiple accounts and I don't need folks at work wondering what I'm doing even on my own time. Until Discord catches up with every single other voice / video conferencing system, I limit where I use it:
  • GirafHuntrGirafHuntr Posts: 759 Member
    I have a question about the culling, though - I have had it turned off via MCCC for an extremely long time, but from what I remember, culling would delete an entire household. I wasn't ever aware of a case where it culled one Sim out of a household. Am I wrong about this? Good to learn if that's how it works, but I wouldn't expect culling to randomly delete Eliza and not Bob...
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  • GirafHuntrGirafHuntr Posts: 759 Member
    spend4zen wrote: »

    What @FatTribble23 said. .You need a award for that one. I am really tired of seeing things get removed or "toned down" bc of people complaining instead of fixing settings. And I swear I think the brown baby bug is just the way the Random CAS ends up picking a skin tone bc there are more choices in a darker shade then a lighter shade so its percentage/chance. It usually changes when the baby ages up and if not just use a cheat to fix it if it does not fit with the family or your story. As far as NS go's I think it could add to game play a lot, We just need to realize we need to adjust what happens with each household or just turn it off all together if You don't want to mess with it. And yes Culling is a thing I forgot about to until @Stormkeep reminded me about it with his post earlier. That explains where Eliza Pancake and the Goth's went when NS stared adding a million babies and pets bc I did not adjust anything with it at first.

    My view of the skintone issue with babies is that it seems the game only chooses from a very small pool of options for babies. If the skin tone of the Sim has any pigmentation, it chooses the darkest thumbnail. If the child is completely pale, it chooses the lightest thumbnail. There was a time, maybe a year ago, when ALL the baby thumbnails in the game were only the darkest color regardless of the parent skin tones. Then EA said they fixed that, and ever since it was fixed I see only the two extremes. Personally, this bug is the least of my concerns as the toddlers always have their actual inherited skin tone. The babies are just placeholders and it's only the family portrait/thumbnail. It's probably somewhere on their fix list eventually, but low priority.
    My username has been my internet handle for over 20 years since I was 16 and refers to when I had a crush on a very tall boy. I intend absolutely no violence toward beautiful giraffes. <3
  • MsKatieRoseMsKatieRose Posts: 672 Member
    Glad to see so many comments here concerned about the issue. I just hope EA will see this and address it, too.
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  • ElliandreElliandre Posts: 2,468 Member
    If anyone lost their Sim and wants them back try the paranormal stuff séance table to summon deceased Sims or the spooky lot trait with City Living that brings ghosts around. They might still be in the game and not culled yet.

    Raj Rasoya died in my game too and he disappeared from Geeta's social panels and family tree like he never even existed. I know he died by NH stories accident, because I checked back through the notifications and realized there was one saying he got eaten by a cowplant. There was no urn on the lot and technically I don't have a cowplant in the game either lol, so I didn't know where I could even look for one. I was still able to get him back by using the paranormal stuff séance table and summoning deceased Sims. He was the first to come to that Sim's lot and when I added him back to that household, he appeared back again in Geeta Rasoya's panels and she started grieving for his death.

    Also, I feel kind of bad for all these babies born with the skintone bug who probably got deleted because players thought they were random adoptions and not the biological babies they wanted. Too bad they didn't fix that bug before the baby boom. Poor little deleted Sim babies... you were not adopted! Your parents deleted you for no reason, you would have looked just like them when you aged up to toddler. So tragic :cry:
  • suzanna13suzanna13 Posts: 1,426 Member
    I didn't realize DS was enabled for other households at first. The Watson family in Henford gained 2 toddlers. The father by this point in my game was an elder and his wife was dead. I went into the household and found the elder sim Thomas was the father of one and the Imran the father of the other. Neither child had a mother in their family tree. Even alien babies have a mother.👽
  • JyotaiJyotai Posts: 505 Member
    GirafHuntr wrote: »
    I have a question about the culling, though - I have had it turned off via MCCC for an extremely long time, but from what I remember, culling would delete an entire household. I wasn't ever aware of a case where it culled one Sim out of a household. Am I wrong about this? Good to learn if that's how it works, but I wouldn't expect culling to randomly delete Eliza and not Bob...

    I don't know.

    Here's a thought - do you have the 'show sim info' mod that lets you search for a sim. Try searching for just 'Eliza' if you happen to have left the 'rename sims' option of MCCC on. MCCC in it's defaults love to move the households around and then rename people.

    I wonder... if Stories moves a sim from one house to another will it rename their surname?

    Early on I figured I had settings that were moving sims out of houses, and then culling the household they got put in - but this was only with elders. Still if you don't look for long enough, I guess it could happen to any sim.

    MCCC has moved many sims in my game out of a household into one by themselves, often homeless, and ripe for culling. For any sim I care for I go in an manually flag them to not be culled to stop this.

    I wonder if it's possible for Neighborhood Stories to follow the same path MCCC can - to split a household, move one out, and then eventually cull them? If so - leaving the wrong setting on could set this whole series in motion. Or Eliza could just now be 'Eliza Townie' in some new household...
    I don't use Discord because it doesn't support multiple accounts and I don't need folks at work wondering what I'm doing even on my own time. Until Discord catches up with every single other voice / video conferencing system, I limit where I use it:
  • simgirl1010simgirl1010 Posts: 35,709 Member
    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?

    @simgirl1010 The babies' skin tone is never wrong in live mode (at least not in my games) but only in the family portrait you see of sims in manage worlds. And in does change to the correct skin tone even there once they age up to toddler.

    Thanks. That's good to know. :)
  • _jodielaura_jodielaura Posts: 19 Member
    I have a question. I’ve noticed a lot of people talking about sims having too many babies are also mentioning MCC? Is there anyone having the same problem on console? Because I haven’t noticed anything excessive in my game and I’m on console. Sometimes there will be days when nothing happens at all! I get a few deaths every now and then, barely any biological babies and I was getting quite a few adoptions but I turned them off because I figured it was just gonna add even more horribly dressed townies to my game lol (for reference I do play on normal lifespan)
  • StormkeepStormkeep Posts: 7,632 Member
    edited March 2022
    I have a question. I’ve noticed a lot of people talking about sims having too many babies are also mentioning MCC?

    I think it's more of the fact that MCCC also does some of the same things as NS, so it just compounds the existing tuning problem with NS.

    You mention you have aging on normal. NS seems to be tuned for normal. You may have noticed most people commenting here that it is over-tuned also are saying they play with aging on long or off completely, or that they play rotational (which means aging takes much longer even if on normal). If NS doesn't account for those changes to aging (and it doesn't) hopefully you can understand that, over time, it will produce far too many babies for those longer age settings.
    This post will be edited by StormKeep at some point.
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  • SilentKittySilentKitty Posts: 4,665 Member
    Stormkeep wrote: »
    @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.

    Thank you! That makes me feel more confident about using it, I keep my population well below culling limits.

    I have had a little more time to think about the moodlets. Suppose that the dead sim is one that the other sims dislike or despise, should they have the same moodlets as someone who looses their favorite grandpa? I might just be content with the dead one being present in family trees and the relationships-panel. It might not be perfect but otherwise the game would probably assume that every sim is sorely missed.
  • EmmaVaneEmmaVane Posts: 7,847 Member
    edited March 2022
    The trick is to read through the stories daily, perhaps while sims are sleeping, and go turn off stories where necessary.

    So if you want the Heckings to adopt a kid, then turn that on, but check your stories daily and go and turn it off once they have adopted... Otherwise, they will likely adopt again. Especially if they are the only family (or one of a few families) who have adoption enabled.
  • EmmaVaneEmmaVane Posts: 7,847 Member
    shellbeme wrote: »
    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 reminds me of a show, I think it was called ‘Missing’ and there was a team who had to find out what happened to the missing person. Sure Eric Close was in it.

    Also if a Sim suffers an accidental death why doesn’t an urn get generated? 🤷🏼‍♂️ Does the Grim Reaper only appear on an active lot? Is he required to register the death in game? Maybe that’s why there’s no urn? 🤔🤷🏼‍♂️.

    Maybe in Options, a master report we could go through if wanted that tracks everything that changed. 🤔


    This is actually a bug that predates Neighborhood Stories. It's being seen more often due to NS though. I saw someone mention the bug elsewhere.
  • wahini2024wahini2024 Posts: 547 Member
    @EmmaVane I was hoping this would solve my issue before I had to disable it all. The Goths had 4 infants and I deleted 3 of them. I then disabled their ability to have children and adopt children. They proceeded to have 3 more even with it disabled for them. The same thing happened to the Baily Moon family and the Bjergsens and several others like the Charms and Kealoha. It varied by save. They were all disabled but it didn't prevent them from continuing to adopt and give birth after it started.

    I removed the family and placed them back in which then did prevent it because it was disabled for the reset family but sadly for me this approach didn't work 😔 or any other approach really.

    (No mccc installed)
  • EmmaVaneEmmaVane Posts: 7,847 Member
    wahini2024 wrote: »
    @EmmaVane I was hoping this would solve my issue before I had to disable it all. The Goths had 4 infants and I deleted 3 of them. I then disabled their ability to have children and adopt children. They proceeded to have 3 more even with it disabled for them. The same thing happened to the Baily Moon family and the Bjergsens and several others like the Charms and Kealoha. It varied by save. They were all disabled but it didn't prevent them from continuing to adopt and give birth after it started.

    I removed the family and placed them back in which then did prevent it because it was disabled for the reset family but sadly for me this approach didn't work 😔 or any other approach really.

    (No mccc installed)

    Is it possible that Bella was already pregnant when you turned it off and she gave birth to triplets?

    Turning off bio-kids won't cancel any pregnancies in progress, it just won't start any new ones.
  • EmmaVaneEmmaVane Posts: 7,847 Member
    Stormkeep wrote: »
    dogzdinner wrote: »
    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. :lol:

    It makes sense to update the homes of sims you visit, but not those who you don't interact with.

    With families growing, changing, getting pets and moving house... The Interior Decorator career just got more fun.

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  • StormkeepStormkeep Posts: 7,632 Member
    edited March 2022
    @Jyotai, After about 6 weeks (sim time) of having move-in/move out enabled for half the households in my game I can say with pretty much certainty that Neighborhood Stories doesn't split people from households nor does it merge different households. When it does move-in/move-out it moves the entire household and only the entire household.

    I was hoping it would, and that teens would move out on their own when they became YA's automatically. This would make NS better than MCCC for that kind of moving functionality. Disappointed that it doesn't and now that I've tested it enough I have disabled that feature in NS in favor of MCCC.

    I'd be happy if someone came along here and said I was mistaken though, and I just didn't leave it running long enough to see it happen.
    This post will be edited by StormKeep at some point.
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  • EmmaVaneEmmaVane Posts: 7,847 Member
    edited March 2022
    Advice on culling and culling vs. death related bugs:

    Move any households you care about into My Households. You might have to increase your safe sim limit in Options (this can reduce performance) if you like a lot of sims. Families left in Other Households can be culled.

    If you don't want your neighbours to be culled, but didn't add them to My Households due to using a low safe sim limit for better performance, maybe disable Move Out for them so they always remain housed. It used to be that housed sims didn't get culled, but with the introduction of safe sim limits (My Household max sims) I think they are just least likely to get culled, with unhoused sims getting culled first. It makes sense that you are less likely to notice them gone if they aren't your neighbours, etc.

    Sims aren't culled if they are currently a romantic partner or friend of your active/played households, however if you play rotationally relationships decay over time (without mods) unless you use the Club feature to keep them steady. It's worth setting up Clubs to keep sims relationships up and prevent culling while rotated away. I also find it cute to set up family/couple Clubs to see families/couples visiting their favourite haunts while playing other households.

    Culled sims are supposed to "leave town" and if your household knows them you will receive a goodbye notification such as "I'm going off the grid" or something along those lines. These sims will be deleted. This effects their entire household, not just a single sim, so wouldn't happen if you were in a relationship with a member of that household etc.

    Single sims going missing from households as if they didn't exist (after receiving a death message from NS) is a bug that predates NS. Sims disappearing from households without NS messages is possibly the same bug, but might be a different one too.

    Sims that die through NS should:
    • Leave urns/tombstones on family lot/in family inventory (unless homeless).
    • Be mourned by household and friends.
    • Still be in family trees.
    • Have a ghost in a hidden household that could spawn at a future time.

    If any of these things don't happen, it's a bug.
  • wahini2024wahini2024 Posts: 547 Member
    @EmmaVane no she wasn't pregnant and had 3 at various times after it was disabled so I dunno I guess they were defiant lol
  • mightyspritemightysprite Posts: 5,808 Member
    I have a question. I’ve noticed a lot of people talking about sims having too many babies are also mentioning MCC? Is there anyone having the same problem on console? Because I haven’t noticed anything excessive in my game and I’m on console. Sometimes there will be days when nothing happens at all! I get a few deaths every now and then, barely any biological babies and I was getting quite a few adoptions but I turned them off because I figured it was just gonna add even more horribly dressed townies to my game lol (for reference I do play on normal lifespan)

    Hi @_jodielaura I don't have MCCC and for now I've only been playing my scenario game which is one household, normal aging. I don't feel like the household changes are excessive at least compared to the way I normally play. Usually for my played households, in 2 sim-weeks, the ones that are in an early family stage may have anywhere from one to several children during that time. The others are focused on other areas of their lives and might not have any children at all.

    I wonder if people talking about too many babies/pets are also looking at the list of households and noticing how many households have no children/pets, no family changes at all?

    I also think that the fact that NPCs don't yet have romantic relationship progression makes the whole feature feel a little unbalanced. If people were also starting relationships, breaking up, getting engaged, getting married, the baby and pet changes might not feel like so much of the same thing to the same families.

    When I go back to playing my main save, which is rotational, I'll probably treat NS like aging, and have it on while I play only one of my played households. I don't want NPCs going through 12 weeks of family changes while my played households only go through 1 week of changes each. That would be very chaotic.

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