[ECO] 'You are such a good neighbor' isn't an actual neighbor

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? Deutsch
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
What is your current game version number? 1.63.136.1010
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All except for Seasons, Realm of Magic, Tiny Living
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? With much patience only. Load up any household with a sim who has neighbors living in their neighborhood (preferably ones the sim already knows). Enable free will, fast forward and wait for the "You are such a good neighbor" random event where your sim gets a gift from a neighbor. The bug may be related to Willow Creek only, I'm not sure.
What happens when the bug occurs? Instead of an actual neighbor, the sim who knocks at the door is a random one from a different world. In one case my active sim didn't even know the "neighbor" but the game had filled their relationship bar halfway.
What do you expect to see? The neighbor knocking being an actual neighbor or at least from the same world as my sim.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Yes
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? Yes
Please describe the patch or change you made. Either Eco Lifestyle or the patch before. The Good Neighbor feature wasn't there before.

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First of, sorry for not testing without mods. The Good Neighbor event occurs so rarely that I would have to play for several sim weeks without mods.

The event and the bug occured twice in my game, each time to relatively new residents. Both sims had been played in other neighborhoods already, but split from their original households and moved to Willow Creek. When the Good Neighbor event occured, my sims already knew some of their new neighbors.

The first sim got the event in her second week in Willow Creek, the other sim at his third day there. In the first case the "neighbor" was a played sim from Del Sol Valley that I had created myself, in the second case the "neighbor" was a premade, played sim from Sulani, Lia Hauata.

Edit By Crinrict: Added Tag to Title

11 Replies

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verfens
Seasoned Veteran
6 years ago
Hm, interesting. Wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that npcs from any world can be counted as "neighbors" when voting on the community action board?

Actual thing of note is that the devs will not prolly look into this bug unless others experience it and come to your thread complaining of the same issue, or you test the game without your mods installed to see if the bug still occurs, as mods can be very well known to break the game. Make sure that when you test again you've removed mods, deleted your localthumbnailcache file, etc. I've not played a ton on account of a few other bugs making it pretty irritating.
crinrict
Hero+
6 years ago
@EnkiSchmidt It seems to me that all these events have similar issues.

I'm unsure, are those events something they added to base or do they come with the pack ? Does anyone know ?
simvasion
Hero
6 years ago
@crinrict it's an Eco Lifestyle specific event.

Like many other background events in the game they weren't made specific enough to invite actual neighbours, like most people would assume. In the majority of the game, it just picks random sims for background stuff like this. Want free earbuds? Why is it Judith Ward calling to give me free earbuds? Why is my sim's yoga instructor knocking on the door of my penthouse apartment saying "Hey neighbour, I'm bored want to hang out?" when he lives in Oasis Springs? Why is Thorne Bailey calling me offering a job as an Astronaut because of my high reputation when Thorne isn't in the Astronaut career? Why is Caleb Vatore a "Student" hanging out at this School Spirit Day party and streaking when he isn't actually enrolled at this university?

The game just uses general filters for all these things. They probably think people won't care enough about background sims to notice. Why would I know so much about all the townies in my game when half of them just get culled every Wednesday? But of course, some people do care about all the sims in their game and crafted each one by hand and know everything about them and play rotationally. But that doesn't seem to be a style of gameplay Maxis knows exists...
EnkiSchmidt
Hero
6 years ago
@simvasion @crinrict
So Good Neighbor uses similar filters as the other call/invite/call out events? Too bad. I assumed the game would be able to recognize my actual neighbors, because it can do so during the Welcome Wagon Event. Should I hit "accept as solution", since the system seems to be working as intended?
simvasion
Hero
6 years ago
@EnkiSchmidt I don't know. It's one of the many cases in the game where they use general filters. While it's weird, I can also see their side/reasoning for it - it reduces the number of sims/resources if the game can re-use existing sims/resources instead of generating new sims to fit the event.

E.g. if you clear out a neighbourhood and move in a single sim, then you won't have any neighbours. Does the game just never trigger the event or does it trigger the event and then generate new sims to allow it to happen?

I would guess that it's their design choice, but I'll leave it to Crin to decide if it should progress as a bug report or be left open as feedback for change.

If you're open to using mods, I think Zero (of Zero's Sims 4 Mods) has a few that change some events so that the game only uses actual neighbours and make more sense. Mostly for sims hanging around at community voting boards, I don't know if there's one for these Good Neighbour/I have a gift for you events.
crinrict
Hero+
6 years ago
@EnkiSchmidt At this point, I can't say what's a bug and what not.

This is the third report of these events having issues. Two of which might just be a design call and the third clearly a bug (males getting pregnant)

I'm going to treat is as bug for now until QA says otherwise :D
SqueamishNerd
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
I just wanted to say that this happens to me too and I’ve never had any mods or cc.
manzana0807
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
@simvasion Lotharihoe on Tumblr has a great mod set called Sim Spawn Overhaul. Maybe you are thinking of it? It fixes a lot of the problems with walkbys and it fixes the problem in this post.
Theenaabeenaa
5 years ago
I have had this happen. It has been another sim I have played before in another household in a completely different world saying they are my neighbor even though I have actual neighbors in the neighborhood (which never show up in this role).
LokisMinx
Seasoned Veteran
4 years ago
Ps4 - all packs
I get this issue all the time. The latest is Tina Tinker arriving at my door all the way from her world to Henford-on-Bagley to say what a great neighbour my sims are...