@Stormkeep Oh good so it's not just me then I was wondering. So maybe at the beginning it tries to fill the game with a percentage of babies, pets and then just levels off. I don't mind the slower pace. I really want to rotate and play out a pregnancy or adoption for a bit. Are the pets always a breed or are they mixed breeds too? In CAS I saw so many have one eye color a different color too lol. I did a lot of adopted pet editing recently to make their eyes match colors I'm ocd I know it
The "have to enter the breed" thing annoys me and ultimately they are mostly NPC households and I won't really care what the breed is. MCCC makes them all interbreed anyway. So I just write "dog" or "cat" and get out of there as quickly as possible. Once or twice I even got more sassy and wrote things like "whatever." LOL
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.
@Girafhuntr...that's the same thing I do, except I usually type "Mutt" for dogs and "Furball" for cats. Whatever...Idc particularly what the breed is, just how cute they are.
@GirafHuntr@Stormkeep haha I'm going to borrow those. Dog & Cat if they look like standard breeds, Mutt and Furball if they have different colored eyes
For me it was just killing off my Townies too much, and while I was fine losing some of the older ones I've had in my saves for a long time, it got excessive and I shut it off.
I wasn't really paying much attention to the neighborhood stories thing, but I was wondering if it messed up my game.
I play several households, and lately I built an orphanage so I've started playing with that. But suddenly I got a bunch of messages about the spirits of ghosts fading away. Nothing unusual, but there was so many that day. Then I saw a message for the ghost of one of my own Sims, and I was like, "What? She's dead? When did she die?" So I logged out to check her family. She wasn't there, and I couldn't find a tombstone or urn. I looked around the world for her, but couldn't find her anywhere. So I logged into a household that had people that knew her. They were in mourning because a member of their family just died! And I couldn't find her tombstone or urn either!
Fortunately I have MCCC, and discovered I could revive both Sims by clicking on their image in another Sim's list of friends. I also saw the ghosts of young npcs in friend lists that had died too.
I was wondering why the game killed off several Sims at the same time. It was like a Sim terrorist set off a bomb somewhere, or there was a Sim serial killer on the loose. A couple days later I noticed a couple more of my Sims were dead, one because I saw his ghost in his son's friend list, and the other because her two children were suddenly put up for adoption. I was like "What? Why are her kids being adopted? Is she dead too?" And so I logged into the npc household that adopted her son (it supposedly adopted both, but only 1 of them was there) and checked his friend list to revive his mom. I'm not sure where the other boy is. The notice said they were both adopted by the same family, but only one of them was there. (The same thing happened with another pair of siblings. The girl was adopted into the household her older brother moved into, and the baby was supposed to be there too, but wasn't.)
Aside from all the mystery deaths and adoptions, I also see a lot of Sims moving. Families move out of houses, and into houses, all the time. It was strange. I set the game so NPCs would not move into empty houses, because I want to leave the houses available for my own families. I could get used to that though, but I don't really like seeing some of my favorite Sims killed off (3 of the 4 sims the game killed were among my favorites). It makes it harder to play rotationally.
Its odd, I'm hearing all this and wondering what I've done wrong lol. Because I have everything turned on for every household but there's next to nothing happening in my neighborhoods in nearly two generations. I probably have something configured wrong. No biggie, I'll figure it out. I'm kinda glad its not working for me though. Not sure I can handle that many babies :P
Loving yourself is the most simple and complicated thing you can do for you.
@duhboy2u2, are you sure you have it turned on? I saw some people when it first came out that thought that having the individual settings with a white background meant they were on, and green meant off....but that's backwards.
I got a call from Moira Fyres asking if she should have a baby. So I said sure go ahead. BUT!!!! I then realized her picture looks old. OOOPS!! Well I saw her a few days later and she is about to pop. And yes she is an Elder.
The "have to enter the breed" thing annoys me and ultimately they are mostly NPC households and I won't really care what the breed is. MCCC makes them all interbreed anyway. So I just write "dog" or "cat" and get out of there as quickly as possible. Once or twice I even got more sassy and wrote things like "whatever." LOL
Yes, that is annoying. I got that too, lol.
Always be your unapologetically and authentic self
I haven't had a chance to play with the neighborhood stories yet, but I have been following others' experiences of it and watched a few video "reviews." I have a few things to say.
1) Reviews are no longer about actually thoughtfully going through as many aspects of a feature or pack as possible to form a thorough and cohesive opinion - it's about reacting to a feature for a short amount of time, basically giving first impressions. They don't take into consideration how the feature works over the long-term, don't really look at how different features or packs integrate with each other etc. This frustrates me since it's surface value and shallow. It's ironic that we often complain about how TS4 looks shiny but often fails when you play for a while, yet reviews are giving most of the attention to the shiny surface.
2) Neighborhood stories seems like it follows the same logic as above: it seems cool as a first impression, but isn't good over a longer period of time.
Occurences of events are wayyy too regular. I want all the categories of events to happen in my game, but I want them to happen at a realistic rate. The probabilities and frequency of events in this feature are not weighed well at all. If you like a chaotic playstyle, that's great, but most of the time I want to play in a relatively realistic atmosphere with the occasional chaotic thing. As an example: occasional Vlad break-ins are fun to me, and my favourite TS4 save file ever became so interesting because I went with it when Vlad broke in, even though I originally planned to have a completely different game. But now I just lock the door for vampire break-ins every time because it happens every time, so it isn't unique or exciting or spontaneous anymore. It's just the game reminding me that I have vampires installed. I think it's hilarious if Summer Holiday unexpectedly dies from a meteor shower with neighborhood stories, but if a sim dies from a random occurrence every week, they're just a victim of the random weekly dice roll. It's not a fun and rare event with any significance or much effect on the game other than causing a new randomly generated townie to spawn. If sims actually had a proper mourning system and memory system, Summer Holiday's friends could host her funeral at the park that my sim accidentally crashed and made new friends at, the perfect sad stranger at the nightclub could confess to my sim that they need comfort since their friend died etc. That's how you make the world feel alive. But that isn't what happened.
I love that sims finally get promoted and demoted in their careers, maybe change them etc, but that doesn't mean that every sim should flip-flop between careers. I don't want certain households to not change, I just want them to be less likely to due to their stage in life etc. That's why it's important to make these "big deal" events such as job changes, deaths and children more rare, thus balancing occurences and making it feel like sims are actually making a big decision instead of a random, inconsequential one from a pool. Big changes and general indecision could be more likely for teens, early young adults (still figuring life out) and early adults (mid-life crisis), but otherwise sims should be stable unless their traits dictate otherwise. Elders should be the most stable, though a rare household could decide to move to a nicer world or neighborhood for their retirement. Early adults and late young adults should be more likely to have kids than other age groups since their lives are more stable; young adults and teens should be more likely to date around etc. The rate of children being born and adopted should more or less equal the rate of sims dying, not fill up every household within a few weeks etc. Probabilities for occurrences should be WEIGHED in a MEANINGFUL way, otherwise it isn't a deep feature. You can see this problem very clearly with buffs: certain traits, interactions, events, ages, relationship types and stages, hobbies, careers etc. should make your sim more likely to have certain buffs, thus making it feel like they are actually thinking about things that happen to them and they engage in. Instead, buffs are emotion- and pack-based, your sim's life not affecting them at all. Thus, they feel meaningless.
Lastly, I hope that dating and marriage will be implemented into neighborhood stories in a later patch alongside a better romance system (turn-ons/offs etc), because I'm really tired of micromanaging. I don't want to micromanage who dates who so sims can have kids; I don't want to give my input on what other sims decide to do unless they're my friends etc.
TL;DR: Neighborhood stories would be cool if the weights of possibilities are fixed. Until then, it's relatively chaotic and meaningless.
One final thing: this would be the perfect time for the return of the newspaper. I would much rather find out news from neighborhood stories through the paper than through notifications or the mailbox.
I like the concept but as it operates off an AI system it is not perfect and may never be and it must be tweaked every now and then. When I used to play Sims 4, I never paid attention to the NPCs and ignored them and just focused on my Sims.
Post edited by Goldmoldar on
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I haven't tried any of the storylines but have enabled everything that can happen in the latest Save.
I found that by clicking on the mailbox I got all the latest news by clicking on it several times, each time it gave a storyline message, Sims dying, adopting, moving in and out of homes etc. It then tells you that's all the news and won't give any more.
It's about time they brought back the newspaper or had an online newspaper to do the same thing.
I'm not far enough in to say for sure, but it looks like it. Day 4 of my author save and Moira Fyres walks through the square in Tartosa very pregnant. I haven't really paid her much attention, like ever, but I don't remember ever seeing her pregnant this early in a save. And i have Summer getting really attracted to Travis, and she suddenly calls and ask if she should go on a date with Clement Frost. What? Ten real world minutes earlier she was all for a big helping of Travis and then suddenly she wants Santa? What the plum happened after I left?
Whats interesting to me is how things change from save to save. I mean some things are pretty constant, like the Goths breeding like bunny rabbits, but other sims seem to be more fickle.
For example the Charm family in Glimmerwood really arent pet lovers in any save except for one. In this one save they have adopted 4 dogs, presumably so they can have one each!LOL
Just had the first death notification in my game via Neighborhood Stories. You'll never guess who it was. Dirk Dreamer. Sadly, he was trying to fix cereal, but it burst into flames.
@Louise_G0325 I thought that was really well said and I totally agree. To be honest, I think the ways in which I have MCCC tweaked are already doing this far better. The random death thing is actually the most interesting to me, and the career changes. But I ended up turning those off too because they are so chaotic and constant that they don't seem meaningful. The only one I left on for awhile was adopting pets, but soon too many families started to have pets, so I eventually turned that off too. :shrug:
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.
One save file I have been playing is starting to progress a bit with the neighborhood stories.
The Landgrabs, adopted a young boy into their family.
The Goths welcomed another child into their family, and Nine Caliente became a mom as well. Thankfully, not with Don Lothario, since he is currently the sire to Evelyn's kids, who is one of my Sims. They have three sons together, and a 4th baby on the way.
That is the current events in that save file, haven't played my other ones long enough yet.
Well...I thought I'd escaped it. As soon as it came out, I went into the main game options and disabled it.
But it had quietly been running in the background on my unplayed households. Now I don't who was where. Totally messed them up. Babies everywhere. I really enjoyed spending a couple of hours sorting it all on a Saturday afternoon instead of playing my game /s
@Stormkeep has warned a few times that you have to check settings in two places. I did disable it in the main game settings (which should have killed it with fire across the entire game) and I checked the household management window and saw it was disabled there, so thought I was covered. But it was sneakily set in Other Households.
I didn't want it anywhere near my save because everything they do like this is always turned up to number 11 and seems to be based on a basic RNG algo.
Awake.
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity.... The Ghost Song - Jim Morrison
I have Neighborhood Stories disabled but I still get calls, more than one time a day, from friends asking if they should have a baby. I've said yes almost every time one sim will call with that question like 'I've already told you yes(or no)! Now quit bothering me!'
Origin ID HillyPlays P.A.C.E- Positive Attitude Changes Everything
@HillyBeth, I always used to say yes whenever i got one of those NS phone calls...but then one time the sim I was playing got a phone call from someone asking if they should get married. I had her say yes, and wham, the sim I was playing ended up instantly married to the sim who she was on the phone with....because it turns out that he was asking her if he should get married to her. >.<
I read them more carefully now and sometimes say no after that.
Well...I thought I'd escaped it. As soon as it came out, I went into the main game options and disabled it.
But it had quietly been running in the background on my unplayed households. Now I don't who was where. Totally messed them up. Babies everywhere. I really enjoyed spending a couple of hours sorting it all on a Saturday afternoon instead of playing my game /s
@Stormkeep has warned a few times that you have to check settings in two places. I did disable it in the main game settings (which should have killed it with fire across the entire game) and I checked the household management window and saw it was disabled there, so thought I was covered. But it was sneakily set in Other Households.
I didn't want it anywhere near my save because everything they do like this is always turned up to number 11 and seems to be based on a basic RNG algo.
Couple of things to check:
These settings are per save. Is it possible you changed it in one save but not the one you’re noticing the problems in?
Did you clear the mailbox of notifications (there might have been some built up there before you changed the global setting) and then continue to see changes after that?
Maybe hit “me too” in the bug thread if these suggestions don’t help. I know my game isn’t having this issue because I use the global setting to disable them, then I turn it on for a week every once in a while and it works only during that time.
Comments
Regarding the breeds, I feel like some of them are mixed breeds, yes. I could be wrong though, it's just how it looks to me.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
I wasn't really paying much attention to the neighborhood stories thing, but I was wondering if it messed up my game.
I play several households, and lately I built an orphanage so I've started playing with that. But suddenly I got a bunch of messages about the spirits of ghosts fading away. Nothing unusual, but there was so many that day. Then I saw a message for the ghost of one of my own Sims, and I was like, "What? She's dead? When did she die?" So I logged out to check her family. She wasn't there, and I couldn't find a tombstone or urn. I looked around the world for her, but couldn't find her anywhere. So I logged into a household that had people that knew her. They were in mourning because a member of their family just died! And I couldn't find her tombstone or urn either!
Fortunately I have MCCC, and discovered I could revive both Sims by clicking on their image in another Sim's list of friends. I also saw the ghosts of young npcs in friend lists that had died too.
I was wondering why the game killed off several Sims at the same time. It was like a Sim terrorist set off a bomb somewhere, or there was a Sim serial killer on the loose. A couple days later I noticed a couple more of my Sims were dead, one because I saw his ghost in his son's friend list, and the other because her two children were suddenly put up for adoption. I was like "What? Why are her kids being adopted? Is she dead too?" And so I logged into the npc household that adopted her son (it supposedly adopted both, but only 1 of them was there) and checked his friend list to revive his mom. I'm not sure where the other boy is. The notice said they were both adopted by the same family, but only one of them was there. (The same thing happened with another pair of siblings. The girl was adopted into the household her older brother moved into, and the baby was supposed to be there too, but wasn't.)
Aside from all the mystery deaths and adoptions, I also see a lot of Sims moving. Families move out of houses, and into houses, all the time. It was strange. I set the game so NPCs would not move into empty houses, because I want to leave the houses available for my own families. I could get used to that though, but I don't really like seeing some of my favorite Sims killed off (3 of the 4 sims the game killed were among my favorites). It makes it harder to play rotationally.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
Yes, that is annoying. I got that too, lol.
1) Reviews are no longer about actually thoughtfully going through as many aspects of a feature or pack as possible to form a thorough and cohesive opinion - it's about reacting to a feature for a short amount of time, basically giving first impressions. They don't take into consideration how the feature works over the long-term, don't really look at how different features or packs integrate with each other etc. This frustrates me since it's surface value and shallow. It's ironic that we often complain about how TS4 looks shiny but often fails when you play for a while, yet reviews are giving most of the attention to the shiny surface.
2) Neighborhood stories seems like it follows the same logic as above: it seems cool as a first impression, but isn't good over a longer period of time.
Occurences of events are wayyy too regular. I want all the categories of events to happen in my game, but I want them to happen at a realistic rate. The probabilities and frequency of events in this feature are not weighed well at all. If you like a chaotic playstyle, that's great, but most of the time I want to play in a relatively realistic atmosphere with the occasional chaotic thing. As an example: occasional Vlad break-ins are fun to me, and my favourite TS4 save file ever became so interesting because I went with it when Vlad broke in, even though I originally planned to have a completely different game. But now I just lock the door for vampire break-ins every time because it happens every time, so it isn't unique or exciting or spontaneous anymore. It's just the game reminding me that I have vampires installed. I think it's hilarious if Summer Holiday unexpectedly dies from a meteor shower with neighborhood stories, but if a sim dies from a random occurrence every week, they're just a victim of the random weekly dice roll. It's not a fun and rare event with any significance or much effect on the game other than causing a new randomly generated townie to spawn. If sims actually had a proper mourning system and memory system, Summer Holiday's friends could host her funeral at the park that my sim accidentally crashed and made new friends at, the perfect sad stranger at the nightclub could confess to my sim that they need comfort since their friend died etc. That's how you make the world feel alive. But that isn't what happened.
I love that sims finally get promoted and demoted in their careers, maybe change them etc, but that doesn't mean that every sim should flip-flop between careers. I don't want certain households to not change, I just want them to be less likely to due to their stage in life etc. That's why it's important to make these "big deal" events such as job changes, deaths and children more rare, thus balancing occurences and making it feel like sims are actually making a big decision instead of a random, inconsequential one from a pool. Big changes and general indecision could be more likely for teens, early young adults (still figuring life out) and early adults (mid-life crisis), but otherwise sims should be stable unless their traits dictate otherwise. Elders should be the most stable, though a rare household could decide to move to a nicer world or neighborhood for their retirement. Early adults and late young adults should be more likely to have kids than other age groups since their lives are more stable; young adults and teens should be more likely to date around etc. The rate of children being born and adopted should more or less equal the rate of sims dying, not fill up every household within a few weeks etc. Probabilities for occurrences should be WEIGHED in a MEANINGFUL way, otherwise it isn't a deep feature. You can see this problem very clearly with buffs: certain traits, interactions, events, ages, relationship types and stages, hobbies, careers etc. should make your sim more likely to have certain buffs, thus making it feel like they are actually thinking about things that happen to them and they engage in. Instead, buffs are emotion- and pack-based, your sim's life not affecting them at all. Thus, they feel meaningless.
Lastly, I hope that dating and marriage will be implemented into neighborhood stories in a later patch alongside a better romance system (turn-ons/offs etc), because I'm really tired of micromanaging. I don't want to micromanage who dates who so sims can have kids; I don't want to give my input on what other sims decide to do unless they're my friends etc.
TL;DR: Neighborhood stories would be cool if the weights of possibilities are fixed. Until then, it's relatively chaotic and meaningless.
One final thing: this would be the perfect time for the return of the newspaper. I would much rather find out news from neighborhood stories through the paper than through notifications or the mailbox.
Pirates!! http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/906481/pirate-gp-smuggling-dueling-live-on-ship-or-build-own-and-more#latest
I found that by clicking on the mailbox I got all the latest news by clicking on it several times, each time it gave a storyline message, Sims dying, adopting, moving in and out of homes etc. It then tells you that's all the news and won't give any more.
It's about time they brought back the newspaper or had an online newspaper to do the same thing.
For example the Charm family in Glimmerwood really arent pet lovers in any save except for one. In this one save they have adopted 4 dogs, presumably so they can have one each!LOL
http://www.getfreeebooks.com/star-trek-original-series-fan-fiction-trilogy/
The Landgrabs, adopted a young boy into their family.
The Goths welcomed another child into their family, and Nine Caliente became a mom as well. Thankfully, not with Don Lothario, since he is currently the sire to Evelyn's kids, who is one of my Sims. They have three sons together, and a 4th baby on the way.
That is the current events in that save file, haven't played my other ones long enough yet.
But it had quietly been running in the background on my unplayed households. Now I don't who was where. Totally messed them up. Babies everywhere. I really enjoyed spending a couple of hours sorting it all on a Saturday afternoon instead of playing my game /s
@Stormkeep has warned a few times that you have to check settings in two places. I did disable it in the main game settings (which should have killed it with fire across the entire game) and I checked the household management window and saw it was disabled there, so thought I was covered. But it was sneakily set in Other Households.
I didn't want it anywhere near my save because everything they do like this is always turned up to number 11 and seems to be based on a basic RNG algo.
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity....
The Ghost Song - Jim Morrison
HillyPlays
P.A.C.E- Positive Attitude Changes Everything
I read them more carefully now and sometimes say no after that.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
Couple of things to check:
These settings are per save. Is it possible you changed it in one save but not the one you’re noticing the problems in?
Did you clear the mailbox of notifications (there might have been some built up there before you changed the global setting) and then continue to see changes after that?
Maybe hit “me too” in the bug thread if these suggestions don’t help. I know my game isn’t having this issue because I use the global setting to disable them, then I turn it on for a week every once in a while and it works only during that time.
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/OPEN-Can-t-disable-Neighbourhood-Stories/td-p/11365891