Neighbourhood Stories

With the addition of Neighbourhood Stories back in 2021 I was hopeful that this would finally bring a new level of immersion to the Sims 4. However this feature has caused me nothing but frustration and I end up turning them off. With no Sims 5 coming I've been thinking of ways that this could be improved within the Sims 4.

1. Individual Room and Lot Tags

I love the idea of townie starting their own families or getting pets (inc Horses) and moving to a new home that can accommodate them. If we had Room Tags in build mode that we could set to work alongside Neighbourhood Stories that would be great. For Example, I build a house that has a Nursery I tag that room as a Nursery x1 and then if NPCs want to move to accommodate their new born the system would search the world's for any empty houses that have a nursery tag suitable for the amount of children. Tags could range from Nursery, Toddler Room, Teen Room, Stables, suitable for Cats, suitable for Dogs. 

2. NPCs move with Funds

I needed to repeal a NAP only to discover that my neighbours had moved out. Not into a house but Not in World. I went to move them back into their house but they only had starting funds (not the value of the property they left. I didn't want to turn on cheats for free real estate as I was working on Xbox achievements which disable if cheats are on. Personally I think NPC should remain in their home if they are not going to move in to a house. Moving to Not in World seems very weird to me.

3. Pets

If the system decides that a family will adopt a cat or dog it would be great if a food bowl and bed spawned on the lot when I visit my neighbour so save me from having to deal me starving pets or having to interrupt my gameplay by going to Manage Worlds, build mode and adding manually.

4. A CAS 'build mode'

Tired of seeing game generated townies wearing ridiculous outfits that just get worse and worse with each new release? Being able to enter a new type of CAS (without any Sim present) and then being able to go through and check and uncheck clothing and accessories that we as individuals are happy to have generated on spawned townies. This could also give players their own control over what they personally think should be deemed Masculine, Feminine or Non-binary. For example I would uncheck piercings, hats and sunglasses from being added to ANY spawned Sims regardless of gender. Another example is I would make it so Modern Men's Wear items for example are only added to generated masculine framed Sims, that do not use binary pronouns. Having generated Sims that don't look overly accessorized with awful fashion sense would go along way into me allowing the neighbourhood stories option for having properties auto fill in a new save. One big reason I don't have this enabled is because it's causes me so much work as a player to go in manually and then change these outfits. Yes initially going through all the clothing items after 10 years would be a task in itself but I'd be happy to do that if it meant for a more cohesive and aesthetically pleasing world of Sims where I could meet my new neighbours and go on dates without have to spend 45 minutes giving each Sim a makeover lol. 

5. Sims should only ask "should I spend some time with..." If a member of my household knows the Sim to which they are referring. I get these notifications all the time and I don't know who the Sim is that they're even talking about. These pop-ups then just become frustrating and take me out of gameplay.

6. Burglars

Have a neighborhood story option for burglars on, reintroduce the traditional Sims burglar as a neighborhood story option. If checked that household will have a small chance of having a burglar at night.

Not sure if anyone will read this but I have loved the Sims franchise for the last 25 years but being transparent I've been falling out of love with the Sims 4 over the last few years. If we're not going to have a Sims 5 then my only hope is that the core problems of the Sims 4 are truly addressed. Neighbourhood stories should have on paper at least provided exactly what I was looking for from the Sims 4. I know there are mods for gameplay but unless I'm building I prefer to be cuddled up on the sofa with my controller playing on console. Which does not support mods. If you've read til the end thank you for your time.