Neighborhood stories is a great idea and could easily be built upon. Do you have any ideas for improving Neighborhood stories? Here is mine:
-When I check my mailbox to see what's happening around the worlds sometimes, I write down stuff, like so and so had a baby, or adopted one. Or so and so moved in or got a career. Then next time I'm editing things in Neiborhood stories I remove or add things based on what happened for example If a family recently had a baby and I wrote it down, I will unclick the box to have baby so that they don't have too many. Well, what would be nice is if a pop-up box appeared when you hover over a family in neighborhood stories manage world area, that told you what recently happened within their family. This way I would not have to write things down and also It would just in general improve things.
-Another thing that should occur that doesn't seem to is that townies should enter a career and gain money, you should see that they have gained money, it could even tell you that they made this much money recently. They should then make changes to their house or move into a bigger house based on this. And not just townies but other households too.
-You should be able to influence townies and members of households to seek out a relationship and or marriage. I know that you sometimes receive calls from npc's saying should I go on a date with so and so, and then they will update you later how the date went...but nothing ever seems to come out of this, for example a marriage or girlfriend/boyfriend situation...and also if such a change did occur it would be nice to have an information area somewhere that would keep tabs of these things, not just the notification wall.
-Other general additions that could be made, although it may overload the game with data, but just an idea is if members of households would skill build on there on/or by influence and this change be viewable like through a pop-up box I mentioned in the first idea. If a townie or household member enters a certain career, they should build up skill that is relevant to that career, progress in that career and move on to bigger furniture and houses. Or perhaps they should experience getting fired or losing progress.
-I have had other ideas that are not coming to me while I'm typing this, but ultimately, I think Neighborhood stories is a great addition and should definently be added upon. I would like to see your ideas, and also, I wish the developers would see this post and possibly implement some of these things.