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Neighborhood Stories OFF button
keekee53
Posts: 4,328 Member
Where is it?? I play on rotation and I really do not want these neighborhood stories killing my game. I know it is minimal now but they are making plans to make it more complex and I don't want it. I hated it in Sims 3 and I do not want it in my game now.
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I also hated SP in Sims 3 so I'm very critical about this new development but so far everything is fine and for now, I feel okay about it.
Silencing the phone won't prevent your sims from receiving phone calls and text messages. It just won't make a sound when they come.
I believe an 'off' toggle will be coming at a later date.
I agree it hasn't been too much for now. My problem is when they continue to add stuff to this system. I hope there is an awareness that not everyone wants story progression in their game. Frankly, I don't want to be bothered with the phone calls and I shouldn't have to deal with it. When implementing things like this on a base game level, they should always make it optional.
Does no affect the relationship between the one who called and the one who answered? There were times I answered it is up to you and the other sim was like thanks for nothing. I didn't check to see if the relationship changed but I really hope they consider an off button sooner rather than later.
I haven't updated my game yet but they should make an ignore option. These "thanks for nothing" replies sound like the game throwing a tantrum because you didn't play along. Someone posted this reply in another thread: "Make my own decisions? With no one to guide my actions? Why does this feel weird?"
Yes, this is a good point. I think the one thing the devs didn't offer is an "ignore" option or a way to "X out" of the pop up window. Then again, I suppose we don't actually have to answer the phone at all. Still, it would have been nice to have a failsafe way to just close the window with nothing changing, no decisions at all.
Then again, we can't ignore the chance cards from school/jobs/parenthood.
Edit: Those are different from sims "communicating" with each other. So hopefully we do get an option to simply close the pop up window.
Saying No is not the same. For example, in another thread someone reported Jacques Villareal asking Morgan Fyres whether he should change his career. That man is a criminal mastermind and Morgan could be his daughter. The phonecall is character-breaking and therefore poses a serious problem for story-oriented players.
That's why I want an option for the game to skip households marked as played. A complete off switch would be even better, of course.
The second phase of this update will let us designate each household’s participation in Neighborhood Stories, if I understood the blog post correctly. I wish they’d have waited for that to roll this out.
Many complex simulation type games such as Crusader Kings have very deep game setup options, where game parameters can be adjusted with either selecting values or in some cases sliders so the player can balance the game to their taste by selecting the severity of some mechanics or disabling them altogether. Of course a player has the option of ignoring these altogether.
In addition, many options are provided on the main HUD of these type of games - autonomy and aging options would be excellent candidates for this in Sims 4, IMO.
Mods like MCCC go a long way towards alleviating this problem in Sims 4 and would not be surprised to see the option to disable neighbourhood stories in that mod.
However, mods don't help the console player. I have not played the console version so not even sure those players can set 'testingcheats', so the option to disable should certainly be provided if just for those players - also lob in a few cheats for them for good measure
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 want to be able to choose which systems I use or don't use in each of my saves depending on what kind of story I want to be playing.
Some of the features I really want on/off toggles for:
-Neighborhood stories
-Sentiments
-Reputation
-Sims outside of the active household acquiring likes and dislikes on their own
-Random events like alien abductions and vampire attacks
-The Strangerville mystery
They gave us good on/off options for fame, weather and lifestyles. Why didn't they give us those same on/off options for the other systems?
YES YES YES YES!!!
As others have said, when you have your own Neighborhood story going on, it is a distraction to have character-breaking events going on. Story Progress was the main reason why I did not enjoy Sims 3 because it was hard to rotate households with that going on. I get people play legacy and want things going on in other households without intervention but please give us rotational players an OFF button.
All of this sounds great.
I also wish they'd have given us the option to turn off Likes/Dislikes per save. I had already been using my own personal likes/dislikes system from the get-go, because my sims care about far more than just colors, music, or skills. In my story-focused play likes and dislikes mean something, but the game version doesn't add anything but unnecessary and meaningless social interactions to spam (and they do it autonomously way too much). After trying it, I stopped using the game mechanic for most of my played sims, so I really don't need it at all. Sadly, I have no option to also turn it off for unplayed sims. The best I can do (which is far less than adequate) is to edit random townies and such whenever I come across stuff that makes no sense. Like a case a couple of days ago where I discovered a fitness instructor at a gym who disliked fitness.
Because I can't; I keep all sigs turned off.
That's exactly how I feel, I don't use MCCC for any type of story progression but I don't want EA to mess with my families lives and I 1000% do not want a bunch of interrupting phone calls disrupting my story. Especially after seeing some of the ones people have gotten. (IE: a grandmother asking her toddler granddaughter if she should switch careers).
And since I had zero interest in the "manly" kit they just put out, I have no need to update the game and will pass on any new DLC that's upcoming until they add a complete "OFF" toggle for Neighborhood Stories.
Oh my, I'm giving my poor man Jacques a bad reputation here! I meant to say that he is old enough to be Morgan's father, and that I cannot see him valueing her advice that much. (On a sidenote, in one of my saves it was the other way around: Hugo had an unrequited crush on Morgan. Maybe we should swap our Morgans, lol.)
I'm very much looking forward to the fine tuning options.
Oh I get you now 😅😆
I was thinking about her skin tone compared to Dominic’s and thought, well, that could be possible.
It is kind of weird that Jacques would care what Morgan thought, but she had just aged to a YA so it wasn’t as bad as if she was still a teen.
I just got such a call from an elder female that is happily married with three children and the Sim she wanted to get involved in was a mean young adult who is also married - I was too scared to tell her she shall go for it, especially as I'm playing this familiy on rotation).
Are you SURE the mother was asking to get to know her son romantically or was it just vague? Because while accidental incest bugs have happened in the game before in the past; I'd be surprised if that managed to get out of testing. I can see a BF accidentally being assigned a "ask if they should spend time romantically with another sim" to a GF by the AI of the game, but I'm wondering if it just means platonically but is worded vaguely. I'd expect the BF to send a "should I propose/I found a ring in my SO's bag" to the GF text instead (seen a lot of that on the forums).
The wording is confusing on some of the texts, it's hard to know what they mean. I don't see why a mother should want to get to know her son that she lives with more. He's her son, shouldn't she already know him well enough?