Neighborhood Stories: Excessive deaths

First of all, accidental deaths have never happened until I downloaded Growing Together. And judging by other comments that "coincide" with the release of Growing Together, I'd say that it absolutely has everything to do with Growing Together. In all the years I've been playing this game, NONE of my Sims - and I play a lot of them - have ever had a friend die. There've been rare - and I mean "RARE", as in not losing 3 friends in less than 3 days - deaths of some elderly person here and there and a matter of inheritance. Killing off friends is something that should have been an opt in and not an opt out. 

Also not sure why you bothered to tell me I can get rid of the feature without thinking of telling me how? I know nothing about Neighborhood Stories or Manage Households. And no, I'm not stupid. After a couple of decades playing the previous franchise games and enjoying/knowing their gameplay, I've not had much interest in the weird/juvenile emotional stuff in TS4 or interest in understanding it. It's obviously geared for younger players who haven't been around through the other variations, which is fine by me. So now I have to do some Googling to find out what you're talking about.... I've helped a lot of Sims players throughout the years and was always happy to provide details...

So, after spending about 1/2 an hour trying to find "Manage Households" because no one thought to tell me where it was and so I had to click on every single menu I could think of...and clicking on a menu in the screen where you go to change households is something I have never done...I came across the "Manage Households", and Neighborhood Stories is NOT ENABLED.

I also don't think I ever said "accidental", just that these Sims died. I have no idea how or why they died because literally, in the 4 1/2 years I've been playing this version of the Sims franchise, I have NEVER had a Sim die, except for the random elderly Sims who leave. I downloaded this pack 3 days ago, played it for 2 days, the 3 Sims I played, 2 of whom later married, each had a friend or BFF die. Seems a hard sell to try to convince me that there is no correlation between Growing Together and this completely never seen before raging phenomena. 

And this thread was started after Growing Together came out and the OP was writing about the exact same thing. 

It's been 3 weeks since I last posted and still no real response. EA doesn't allow us to ontact them for help, relying instead on the kindness of strangers who don't work for EA. Obviously, speaking to people who aren't EA employees doesn't help when there's a real issue so I have no idea what to do. I now absolutely hate the game.

Again, this is something that is a big enough issue that there are plenty of requests for help when you Google it. There is literally a gaming website that provides a cheat code to toggle death off and on, but you have to enter it each time to play, which is in no way a solution. The bulk of these complaints actually DID occur after Growing Together came out so perhaps some folks who don't want to or can't address the issue shouldn't focus so much on trying to tell me Growing Together has nothing to do with it.

Since reporting the problem 3 weeks ago, I've been trying to find information on how to deal with this and there literally is nothing on it coming from EA, which makes the whole thing of EA forcing these forums as a sole means of support even more frustrating. It is obviously a problem that needs to be addressed but there is no way to request help directly from them.

I finally tried another save of mine the last couple of days to see if I was still experiencing this issue. Keep in mind that I have disabled Neighborhood Stories, which I shouldn't have to do. After a few Sims days, I noticed my wife/mother Sim was sad and yes, sure enough, a good friend had died. I have no idea from what but it truly irritates me that I have no control over a gameplay that ruins the game, and certainly seems a disturbing aspect introduced into a game that kids will play, too, as well as people who might be triggered by this. And all without a way to simply turn it off or modify it. So what do I do? How do I let EA know that this is detrimental to their game? That it is insensitive and could create issues for people? How do I get EA to fix this? Because I've yet to see anything other than the toggle to make it stop.

How to turn off Neighborhood Stories 

1. Open the game. 

2. Load a save. 

3. Press the ESC key on your keyboard. 

4. Click on the button labeled Game Options. 

5. Click on the button labeled Gameplay.

6. Scroll to the bottom of the panel.

7. Click the checkbox labeled Enable Neighborhood Stories to remove the checkmark. The box should now be blank. 

8. Click the button labeled Apply Changes. 

9 Press ESC twice to close the Menu and return to the game.

(You can skip the next section if you've turned off Neighborhood Stories.)

How to turn off Accidental Deaths in Neighborhood Stories 

1. Open the game. 

2. Load a save. 

3. Press the ESC key on your keyboard. 

4. Click on the button labeled Game Options. 

5. Click on the button labeled Gameplay.

6. Scroll to the bottom of the panel.

7. Click the checkbox labeled Enable Neighborhood Stories to activate the checkmark. The box should be green with a white checkmark in it.

8. Press ESC once to return to the Menu.

9. Click the button labeled Manage Worlds. 

10. Click the button labeled Just Go to Manage Worlds. (You just loaded the save, so there's no need to save again.)

11. Click the button at the top right with the tooltip Manage Households. 

12. Click the button on the top right that has two arrows. The tooltip should read Configure Neighborhood Stories for all Households in "My Households". 

13. Make the settings that you want for the households that you play actively. I usually just leave it disabled.

14. Click the checkmark at the bottom of the panel to confirm your settings and return to the Manage Households panel.

15. Click the Other Households tab.

16. Click the button on the top right with two arrows. The tooltip should read Configure Neighborhood Stories for all Households in "Other Households". 

17. Make the settings you want. A green background means it's okay for those things to happen. A white background means you don't want those things to happen. 

18. Click the checkmark at the bottom of the panel to Confirm your settings and return to the Manage Households panel. 

19. Press ESC to return to the Manage Worlds panel. 

20. Select the world and the lot of the household you want to play and load that household. 

21. SAVE YOUR GAME, so your settings will get saved and you won't have to do all this again for this save.

NOTE: The Neighborhood Stories settings only apply to the save they are made in. You will need to repeat this if you decide to play in another save.